Are you a competitive parent?

Do you ever compare your child’s behaviour or progress with other children of the same age?
It’s tempting to use other children’s development as benchmarks for your own children’s development.

For instance, you may notice that your friends’ five year old can count to 100 easily, while your own five year old struggles to count to 10. It’s easy to think, ‘What’s wrong with my son? Why can’t he count to 100?’

It’s also tempting to use other children’s behaviour as benchmarks for your own child’s behaviour.

For example, you may notice your friend’s daughter just loves to sit and chat after school, while your child just wants to sit in front of the TV when she gets home. It’s easy to think, ‘What’s wrong with my daughter? Why doesn’t she want to sit with me and talk about school? What’s wrong with ME?’

Comparing your child with others is a stress-inducing and, ultimately, useless activity.
BUT it’s a natural thing to do.

We assess our progress in any area of life by checking out how we compare with our peers.
When we were kids in school we compared ourselves to our schoolmates. We knew the academic hierarchy our classroom. Our teachers may not have graded us, but we knew who the smart kids were and where we ranked in the order of things.

As parents we still keep eye on our peers. We use the progress and behaviour of their kids as benchmarks to help us assess our own performance as well as our kids’ progress. This is okay, as long as we don’t lose sight of three important aspects:

1. Kids develop at different rates. There are early developers, slow bloomers and steady-as-you-go kids in every group so comparing your child’s results or performance can be completely unrealistic.

What this means for you: Compare your child with his own performances and development only. Improvement and effort become your focus and your child’s results become the benchmark for progress and development.

2. Kids have different talents, interests and strengths. Okay, your eight-year-old may not be able to hit a tennis ball like Rafa, even though your neighbour’s child can. Avoid comparing the two kids as your child probably doesn’t give a toss about tennis anyway.

What this means for you: Help your child identify his or her talents and interests and focus on these only. Recognise that strengths and interests may be completely different than those of his or her peers and siblings.

3. Parents can have unrealistic expectations for their kids. We all have hopes and dreams for our kids but these can sometimes not be in line with their interests and talents.

What this means for you: Keep your expectations for success in line with their abilities (and not those of your friend’s kids) and interests. If expectations are too high kids will give up. If they are too low, kids will usually meet them!!!

All parents should take pride on their children’s performance at school, in sport or their leisure activities. You should also celebrate their achievements and milestones such as, taking their first steps, getting their first goal in a game or getting great marks at school.

BUT you shouldn’t have too much personal stake in your children’s success or in their milestones, as this close association makes it hard to separate yourself from your kids. It also leads you to play the “compare & compete game” – i.e. by comparing kids you can put pressure on yourself and them to perform for the wrong reasons.

And certainly, your self-esteem as a parent should not be explicitly linked to your children’s behaviour or developmental levels.

Quite simply, some kids are more difficult than others……………so it takes a bold parent to hoist their self-esteem sail to the developmental or behavioural mast of their child.

“You are not your child” is a challenging but essential parental concept to live by. Doing so takes real maturity and altruism, but it is the absolute foundation of that powerful thing known as ‘unconditional love’.

How to help your children make sense of natural disasters


The Queensland floods and the Victorian bushfires continue to wreak incredible havoc on so many people’s lives and will no doubt leave an indelible imprint on our collective psyches. These two natural disasters will be brought into our living rooms via the media over the coming days and weeks.

As adults we all want our children to live carefree lives and keep them from the pain and even horror of tragedies such as natural disasters. In reality we can’t do this.

So what is a parent, teacher, or other caring adult to do when the natural disasters fills the airwaves and the consciousness of society? Here are some ideas:

1. Reassure children that they are safe. The consistency of the images can be frightening for young children who don’t understand the notion of distance and have difficulty distinguishing between reality and fiction. Let them know that while this event is indeed happening it will not affect them directly.

2. Be available. Let kids know that it is okay to talk about the unpleasant events. Listen to what they think and feel. By listening, you can find out if they have misunderstandings, and you can learn more about the support they need. You do not need to explain more than they are ready to hear, but be willing to answer their questions.

3. Help children process what they see and hear, particularly through television. Children are good observers but can be poor interpreters of events that are out of their level of understanding. Sit with them. Talk about it what they see and hear. Ask questions to ascertain their level of understanding.

4. Support children’s concerns for others. They may have genuine concerns for the suffering that will occur and they may need an outlet for those concerns. It is heart-warming to see this empathy in children for the concerns of others.

5. Let them explore feelings beyond fear. Many children may feel sad or even angry with these events so let them express the full range of emotions. They may feel sadder for the loss of wildlife, than for loss of human life, which is impersonal for them.

6. Help children and young people find a legitimate course of action if they wish. Action is a great antidote to stress and anxiety so finding simple ways to help, including donating some pocket money can assist kids to cope and teaches them to contribute.

7. Avoid keeping the television on all the time. The visual nature of the media means that images are repeated over and over, which can be both distressing to some and desensitizing to others.

8. Be aware of your own actions. Children will take their cues from you and if they see you focusing on it in an unhealthy way then they will focus on it too. Let them know that it is happening but it should not dominate their lives.

9. Take action yourself. Children who know their parents, teachers, or other significant caregivers are working to make a difference feel hope. They feel safer and more positive about the future. So do something. It will make you feel more hopeful, too. And hope is one of the most valuable gifts we can give children and ourselves.

Children’s worlds can be affected in ways that we can’t even conceive of so adults need to be both sensitive to children’s needs and mindful of what they say and how they act in front of children.

In difficult times, it is worth remembering what adults and children need most are each other.


PLEASE PASS this article on to others. The article has been professionally laid out for organisations and schools to pass on to parents. You can get a PDF at www.parentingideas.com.au

Alternatively, you can print this article in full and have the following attribution at the bottom of the article:

"This article was written by Michael Grose- parenting educator, author and columnist. For more parenting information and resources visit www.parentingideas.com.au"