About doing the best we can with what we have - I try and try to believe
that even when confronted with the parents who probably score well on IQ
tests, with high power jobs requiring competitive education, but who are
unable to respond to their baby's signals in an appropriate way.  In my
experience the people who might rank average or below in school smartness,
measured by how well they express themselves verbally or understand
epidemiologic research or solve difficult math problems, are NOT the problem
group when it comes to feeding babies when they need food, and loving them
unconditionally.  But spare me for the class genius who is so academically
educated into a caring profession that she has learned not to feel her own
emotions, because she is the more likely one to starve her baby while
denying it even the oral comfort of a pacifier, if only because she has read
somewhere it causes malocclusion.  Sure, I know scads of wonderful,
sensitive, nurturing, warm and brilliant people, but I don't assume that
likeability and intelligence are associated, because they're not.  I also
can't figure out how everyone I know can be so dazzling when supposedly only
a tiny percentage of the population are more intelligent than 99.5 percent
of the rest of us, and I wonder if it is because when you know and care for
someone, their deeper qualities shine through and they appear at their very
best.

So, what I am trying to say is that I don't think the general public is not
very intelligent, and even if they are below average in that regard, it
isn't the problem.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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