When his wife walks out, Ted Kramer and his six-year-old son have a chance to really get to know each other. Then Ted's wife returns and she wants her son back.

Frank Adler is a single man raising a child prodigy, his spirited young niece Mary, in a coastal town in Florida. Frank's plans for a normal school life for Mary are foiled when the seven-year-old's mathematical abilities come to the attention of Frank's formidable mother Evelyn, whose plans for her granddaughter threaten to separate Frank and Mary.