The Big Bang Theory premiered September 2007. My husband has a nuclear engineering degree from MIT. Our younger son, then four, was a budding scientist. (Sample conversation: Him: Can’t come out of the bath. Working on surface tension and light refraction. Me: You mean splashing?)
We tuned in to the pilot. We liked it well enough to keep watching. However, as inevitably happens with Chuck Lorre shows, the humor quickly became mean-spirited, the characters nasty, the plots cliched.
When Young Sheldon debuted 10 years later, though, it seemed different enough in spirit that we gave it a shot.
By that time, we had a 14-year-old son who’d been begging us to let him drop out of school since 3rd grade. He said he was bored. He said he wasn’t learning anything. He said he could do a better job educating himself.
We struck a deal. He would stay in school, behave himself in class, and, once he graduated 8th grade, he could go straight to college.
There were definitely ups and downs over the intervening five years. Instances like his teacher calling to report he got an uncharacteristic D on a geography test. “I don’t think it’s a learning issue,” the teacher began.
“Oh, it’s a learning issue,” I snapped. “He didn’t learn the material.”
My son informed me he didn’t study for the test because he found geography pointless. I informed him that this wasn’t keeping with our bargain.
There were also report cards with the note: His need to question everything the teacher says can become tiresome.
A sample exchange:
Teacher: Think of “is” as an equal sign.
Him: No. Because if you say, “A rose is red,” then the color red is an aspect of the rose, but if you say, “Red is a rose,” a rose is not an aspect of the color red.
He managed to graduate 8th grade. He’d kept his promise. I was determined to keep mine.
We agreed one of New York’s city colleges would be fine. But, as it turned out, CUNY won’t let applicants take its placement test without a high school diploma. Over 50 percent of teens who graduate NYC high schools with a diploma can’t pass the CUNY placement test—but passing the placement test won’t get you a high school diploma!
With the plan for him to attend an affordable school and live at home proving impossible, we adjusted our parameters and visited Simon’s Rock, an early college in Massachusetts. Though it was by no stretch of the imagination affordable, it claimed to meet all financial need via scholarships.
To make the day trip happen, my husband and I took off work. Because neither of us drive, my brother volunteered to chauffeur us, which required him taking time off work, too. I arranged for my daughter to go to a friend’s house after school and for my oldest son to pick her up from there in the evening.
While none of us were impressed with Simon’s Rock’s academics, we still allowed our son to apply. He was ecstatic to get in. Then came the price tag. They wanted four times what we were paying for our oldest to attend an Ivy League university. So much for “meeting all financial need.”
My son was devastated. He was furious. He was belligerent.
Seeing him so upset, I was severely tempted to find some way for him to go. We’d borrow the money.
This is where Young Sheldon came in. That show’s narrative never matched The Big Bang Theory’s. Adult Sheldon maintained no one in his family understood his genius or supported him.
Yet, in seven seasons of the spin-off, we watched Sheldon’s mother, father, and grandmother go out of their way to drive him to his university classes. His dad flew with him to Caltech. His mom went with him to Germany. Sheldon was incredibly supported by his family—which he never appreciated.
What stopped me from giving in to my son over early college was watching Mary perennially giving in to Sheldon—and the entitled, self-absorbed monster that turned him into. One who didn’t even notice the sacrifices other people were making for him, because he simply accepted it as his rightful due.
