This is one of the things that I feel most strongly about and I believe that it is SO important for him to grow up knowing that he does not need to compare himself to anyone else in any way.
Something I have said from the beginning is that I want Action man to have the greatest amount of self confidence and belief in himself andhis abilities. I want him to feel supported to go out and get whatever it is in life he may want and to dream big in the process. I wan "No Limits" to be our family motto.
This great article was published in the Opinion Pages of the Sydney Morning Herald Yesterday. It really hits the mark about how we should think of our kids.
December 19, 2009 Adele Horin
'Tis the season to … rank the kids. The Higher School Certificate marks are out and the high achievers' lists are published. The university entrance scores are known, determining with decimal-point precision a child's future direction, at least in the short term. Whether 'tis the season to be jolly depends in some households on how the kids have rated: better or worse than expected, better or worse than their peers, their cousins, their father's boss's daughter?
In a country that elevates teenage sporting stars to hero status, it is good to see the brainiacs on the front page, and whole pages of fine print devoted to academic high flyers.
But when the evanescent moment has passed, let's get some perspective on how we rank our kids. A lot of parents will be feeling disappointed with their child's results. Disappointment comes with the parenting territory. Parents may be crazy about their kids. But often they are their child's worst critics.
They notice the weaknesses in their children and overlook the strengths. They worry about poor grades and overlook kind hearts. When it comes to ranking the kids, our set of criteria is too narrow.
It's the guilty secret of parents that they cannot help but compare and contrast their children with the others, and all too often find their own wanting.
If their children are sporty, parents worry they don't study enough; if their children are academic, parents worry they don't play sport. If the children are gregarious, parents wish they'd read more; if they always have their head in a book, parents want them to be more sociable. Just about every parent worries their child spends too much time in front of a computer screen enjoying themselves when they should be studying/sleeping/exercising.
There is always a new opportunity to worry that a child is lagging in some department and in need of improvement. Even children with talent are compared to the protege, and can end up feeling a failure.
It's a perilous journey parents take between neglect and encouragement. Be lackadaisical about study, be of the school that maintains the system puts children under too much pressure and the HSC is over-rated, and children will be hampered, possibly for life, by a poor work ethic and an embarrassing HSC mark. Be a nag and parents can forget to enjoy their children for who they are.
Most new parents with tiny babies will tell you they just want their children to be happy. But before long, a worm of desire wiggles into parents' hearts - for the child to be the greatest, the best, the first, to shine for others as he or she shines for them. Sensible parents know it is pathetic to bask in the reflected glories of the child but they accept the congratulations, anyway.
Competitive parenting starts in the mothers' group when it is impossible not to notice which infant sits up first, walks first, talks first. Later parents notice who reads and writes first. How well I remember my nights at a particular house when I was part of a babysitting co-op. Surrounded by mind-expanding puzzles, clever board games, and tomes on the Ancient Greeks, the children expounded in the sweetest way on everything from the wonders of the milky way to the evolution of a post-communist society. I exaggerate a little, but I'm sure the eight-year-old was reading Anna Karenina when mine was working his way through the Goosebumps series. I always left feeling in awe and inadequate.
The tendency to compare is the killjoy of parenting. Try as parents might to disguise pride in a toddler who is first off the mark, or disguise worry about a late-starter, it seeps out. Fortunately parents rarely go as far as Mitsuko Yamada, a Japanese mother who killed a two-year-old girl in a fit of envy after the toddler beat her own daughter to a place in an elite nursery school.
After hearing my complaints about a son who preferred soccer to study, an acquaintance who was a teacher at a tough high school asked me: "Is he sneaking out the window at night to go drinking?" No, he wasn't. "Is he turning up at school every day?" Yes, he was. "Well what are you worrying about?" the teacher said.
Perspective is all. The antics of boys from tough schools may seem of little relevance to a privileged family, such as my own. But as children grow up, stories of middle-class teenagers who sell drugs, drop out of school, are paralysed by depression, are psychotic with anorexia, or travel with a bad crowd are constant reminders that academic ranking is not everything, not nearly the most important thing.
Parents with new babies and syrupy wishes for a happy child are right. Having a clever child is less important than having a happy one. Having a child who tops the ranks means little if he has a mean streak, a big ego or an inability to get on with people.
It takes a long time to see how your children turn out, an older, wiser parent once told me. How we end up rating the kids when we are old, sick and needing them may have little to do with how clever they are and everything to do with the kindness of their heart.
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