I didn't like Meet The Robinsons, and I said so in this post the other day. But the storyline did connect with another issue I've been mulling over for some time: Whether I'm the right parent for my kids.

Let me explain. The agency I used to adopt my children from Russia operates on a philosophy of matching a child with the right parents. They got to know each of my sons in their orphanages and then connected them to me when they read my paperwork. They thought I was the right parent.

But I was reading a story in the paper a few weeks back about a high school girl whose brilliance in mathematics had just earned her a huge college scholarship. The newspaper said her father, who was a mathematician himself, had honed her natural math skills by drilling and quizzing her in the car on the way to school every morning.

My older son is now deeply in love with science. But I sometimes feel I am butting up against my limits for helping him to enjoy it. I make a point of seeking out the science museums when we travel, but I often leave them thinking he would have benefited so much more from them if I understood science better myself. I've seen the Bernoulli ball set-up probably a dozen times, but I still have trouble connecting the principles it demonstrates to a larger chain of scientific events.

Lewis, the main character in Meet The Robinsons, has this innate comprehension of science and a love of exploration and invention. He tries to share this with the 124 sets of prospective parents who come to the orphanage to consider him for adoption. But they don't understand him. Some seem frightened by his enthusiasm for the gadgets he tries to create. At the end of the movie, he is connected with the right parents, however, and he grows up to be a brilliant, successful inventor.

What if my son should have had Madame Curie for a mom instead of a business journalist? What if his birth parents would have been better at sharing his love of science than me?

Yes, I know, once again I may be worrying a pencil to a point over nothing. My son could decide to follow one of his other passions instead of science. Rock star, famous movie actor, gold-medal gymnast, rival to Bill Gates--I'll just have to hang on for the ride.