Mrs. Wonupper’s Ancestors
I get it. Sort of. Mrs. Wonupper isn’t just basking in reflected glory. Sure, she manages to work the phrase, “my son the doctor” into seemingly disparate conversations—“My son the doctor likes the Dodgers too.” But to be fair, Mrs. Wonupper is also enamored that her son will make a living, believing, perhaps erroneously, that only physicians are capable of residing indoors.
In our evolutionary adaptive environment, it was critical for our kids to be like us, to do what we did, to do what we said. You all go ahead and chase that mastodon, Mumsy, I’m going to paint on this cave wall--was not a thing. To ensure your genes got into the next generation, your kids needed to eat the same berries you ate. Follow your own path, find yourself, eat whatever berries you want, and you didn’t live long enough to paint the savannah pink or blue.
I can’t imagine a lot of Australopithecine conversation. Neither can anyone else. Because—as an exhibit at the Natural History museum points out--spoken language doesn’t fossilize. So it’s anybody guess when the first Dad Jokes evolved. But 350,000 years ago seems a reasonable guess. So how did Mrs. Wonupper’s greatest of great grandmothers 17,000 generations ago communicate that Wonupper's Berry Gathering Business, established forever ago, was the only option? Because you don't hear about children who did it their way, what with them being dead and all and not having had any kidoodles themselves.
Fast forward to now. How does Mrs. Wonupper of 2025 exact her views on her progeny? A different question. There have been a few changes—not to say improvements--as the millennia trot by. More options lately. Not to overlook berry picking, cave painting, or doctoring as careers, but current job websites have some new categories--for refrigerator repair people among others.
How did Mrs. Wonupper not get the memo? A memo which I will thoughtfully translate from the Antediluvian proto-language as follows: your kids don’t necessarily have to do what you do, believe what your believe. Indeed, if you insist that your kids attend the same schools that you attended, read the same books that you read, watch the same movies that you watch, your children may be negatively impacted by the anxiety bus.
But wait I anticipate my gentle readers exclaiming, didn’t your dad read you Winnie the Pooh? Didn’t you read Winnie the Pooh to your kids? Don’t you anticipate, in the fullness of time, that your kids will read Winnie the Pooh to their kids?
Yes. One hundred percent. There is no greater proponent of reading Winnie the Pooh to your kids than this author. Indeed, were I to be woken up at three in the morning and asked what is the one most important aspect of raising healthy children in this toxic world, I would answer, Read them Winnie the Pooh. And maybe play Parcheesi with them while you’re at it. Now, let me get back to sleep.
But on a given day if the kids would prefer to toss a Frisbee or build a rocking chair or bake cookies with you rather than listen to Winnie the Pooh, it is imperative to heed Maria Montessori’s dictum and “follow the child.” Because if you are forcing your kid to do arithmetic worksheets when they would rather write stories, there may be consequences that are both surprising and unfortunate.
Again, an unanticipated suggestion from an unabashed lover of all things mathematical and someone who has made his living and his life teaching Pythagoras to anyone who would listen and some who wouldn’t. Am I recommending that your offspring be allowed to walk down the aisle without feeling strongly about the product of seven and nine?
Heaven forfend.
My only gentle suggestion is that just as even a stray dog knows whether she has been tripped over or kicked, the reason you are pushing math should be clear. Clear to you. And especially clear to your charges. Sharing the joy of discovery, yes. Focusing on being able to say, “my son the doctor learned his multiplication tables on the way home from the delivery room,” not so much.
Because telling your kids that they’re not okay if they don’t do math, learn math, love math isn’t too far down the street from telling your kids that they’re not okay as they are. And implying that your kids aren’t okay as they are is only around the corner from communicating that you don’t actually like your kids. Not liking your kids goes hand in hand with your kids subsequently not liking you either resulting in twice a year calls on your birthday and late December and if there is anything sadder than families not being together more often I would have to go back to the late Triassic 200 million-something years ago--when our mammalian ancestors first evolved--to find it.
Love the kids you get and you’ll get the kids you love. An idea whose time has come.
