My boy is a puzzle genius, but did I miss something?

It was mostly my wife's fault. The whole chain of events goes back to an interaction she had a few months ago with another mom, when the subject of puzzles came up. Having always enjoyed them, our son is now so good at them that he regularly completes them with the tiles down, ignoring the design in favor of just matching the shapes on sight. Our natural tendency to be proud of our son notwithstanding, we admit that it is objectively impressive. It's just that I also find it slightly unnerving, like something I can imagine children being forced to do in a Cold War orphanage.

My wife has no such scruples and has happily internalized this as one of her best qualities, and therefore of her. "Benoît is also good at puzzles," said the other mum. 'Really ?' replied my wife, her voice dripping with benevolent derision, 'Ours can be over 60 years old.' wanting to intervene when it was in full swing. “Does he do them backwards? she asked. I don't know what she wanted from this exchange, probably the other mom would admit that her child was a pasty dunce compared to ours, and maybe she would give us some money for the time lost. She grimaced to call him back a few days later, but it shows a confidence in our son's problem-solving ability that has now caused us further problems.

I'm talking about his birthday present, a Transformers toy marked 8+. I confess that I thought he would make short work of it, until I saw him throw it to the floor in frustration minutes after it was introduced. "Hey!" I said, like a caring, resourceful dad from an American sitcom, "Don't give up, let's try again." Tragically, this became a lesson for both of us; not only was my son not ready for the transformers marketed to eight-year-olds. Turns out the "8+" could just as easily have specified the hours it took to make this thing or the therapy sessions needed to overcome the trauma of an attempt.

Originally it was a humanoid robot, there were - according to the instructions - only 24,000 movements to transform it into a pleasant 80s sedan. The mechanisms by which this had to be achieved were oblique. There were slots that broke all the rules of Euclidean geometry, dragging out shards of plastic that refused to conform to any man-defined spatial reasoning.

After a while, I'd rather not divulge, and more than a few noises that suggested I'd managed to turn this toy into a paperweight, it finally looked vaguely car-shaped. Unfortunately, I had no idea how I had done this, and anyway, my efforts weren't exactly met by the bored four-year-old floor manager who inspected my work afterward. He was misshapen and lumpy, with robotic limbs sticking out of his knuckles. It looked like a car carrying all of its clothes at once, in order to bypass the airport's baggage allowance. p>

My son gave me a look of pity. "Don't give up," he said, placing a conciliatory hand on my arm. 'Let's try again.'

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