Elementary

Occasionally, I think I may be supplying my son with inappropriate reading material.

Last summer, on a trip to a bookshop, I gave him free reign to choose any book that he wanted. And he chose a book about the periodic table of the elements. Being of a scientific bent myself, this delighted me, and we have happily read sections of it together, and I've brought home bits of this and that from work for his box of "precious things". All children* have pieces of Molybdenum and Tantalum in a box don't they?

But now and then I have rather odd conversations with him...

"Mummy, is my shirt made of Tungsten? Because it says Tu in it"

Which shows an endearing grasp of the concept of chemical symbols, if not their details, and a simultaneous lack of awareness of the clothing brands of leading UK supermarkets.

"I like the noble gases Mummy. My favourite is Helium, because it makes balloons float. Hydrogen would be better because it's lighter, but it's more dangerous."

Can't argue with him there, and nor can the Hindenburg.

"Actually, I think I prefer Xenon and Krypton, because you can get more points for them in Scrabble."

Which is also true, and I confess to feeling a glow of pride when he put "Xenon" on a triple-word-score without any intervention from me.

I'm not entirely sure, however, that my enthusiasm for science and imparting its beauty and majesty to my son has the full backing of all members of the bear household...

On announcing that "everything in the world has holes in it**", LittleBear was asked by his other parent, "Has Mummy been telling you about science again?"

Meanwhile, on the occasion that LittleBear's homework involved finding items outside that began with every letter of the alphabet, naturally LittleBear chose "Xenon" for "X", as he had discovered in his marvelous book that there are trace quantities of Xenon in the air. So far, so good. And then he asked me to bring home a mass spectrum from work to go in his homework book. I started to feel we were heading into slightly alarming territory at this point. Feeling a few minor qualms about what his teacher would think of this, I slipped a little note into his homework explaining how we had reached this point, what with Scrabble, and a book about the Periodic Table, and me making mass spectrometers and all, and I apologised and attempted to explain that I'm not actually a deranged Tiger Mum after all. (I may be deranged in many ways, but not in the field of driving my poor child to learn atmospheric chemistry from an early age.)

Which is how it came about that LittleBear's lovely headmaster stopped me at the school gates one day to laugh at me, and tell me how much he and LittleBear's teacher, Miss M, had enjoyed me digging an ever deeper hole for myself with my note. Because nothing says I'm winning at parenting quite like being mocked by my son's headmaster.


* For the record I would like to point out that Tigger's daughter (aged 10) is attempting to collect as many different elements as possible, and Piglet's son (aged 8) is pretty hot on Tom Lehrer's son "The Elements", so while I may be odd, and my child may be odd, at least my friends and their children are odd too. We may just go off and be odd somewhere together.

** A slightly more in-depth approach to atomic theory than I'm prepared to go into here is required to assess this statement.