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Comparing Toddlers
Tips on Handling Parents Who Compare Children
By Katherine Bontrager
It can happen while at playgroup, the park or even during a friendly neighborhood gathering. The conversation starts innocently enough but soon heads quickly south:
"Cassie is totally potty trained. What about you guys?"
"Aaron can already write his name. Can your little one?"
Almost all parents have had to endure comparisons of their toddlers' development. What begins as pleasant conversation can turn into stressful competition. How can you curb such comparisons? And, more important, how can you tell if you're an unknowing offender?
"What is most profoundly annoying about these comparisons is the anxiety they strike in your heart as a parent if your toddler isn't doing any of the things your friends are boasting about," says Stacy DeBroff, author of The Mom Book: 4,278 Tips – For Moms From Moms (Simon & Schuster, 2002). "At one point, the comparisons got so bad that I turned to my husband and said, 'We're raising the most average kids in America!'"
Whether it's "Jeremy's reading third-grade books" or "Tommy already knows his alphabet," it's hard to share a preening parent's joy. "It makes you think, 'Am I not exposing my child to enough books? Is it my fault because I didn't play Mozart while my baby was in utero?' It's very exasperating if your child is behind," says DeBroff. "It's almost as if you should be ashamed. But the truth is that there are so many milestones in a toddler's development. Somehow, we've taken a toddler's abilities and equated them with the good parenting seal of approval."
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