But Can He Do It Backwards?

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 MomsFrom 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."

Amy Shanler, a mother of 20-month-old twin daughters, has experienced this tiring trend. "In general, the more parents stay active with their kids, the less time they have for these types of comparisons ... but they happen anyway,"says the mom from Bedford, Mass. "Because I have two children to compare to each other not to mention with other kids I've had to come up with some ways to deal."

Shanler reminds herself that kids typically learn one thing at a time and focus on it exclusively. "When they're in that learning process, sometimes they don't focus on other things so walking becomes the main priority and speech isn't as important," she says. "If I'm worried, I'll ask my pediatrician. She knows development a lot better than first-time or even second-time mothers."

Want to see more?

• Comparing Our Children and Why We Shouldn't
• The Urge to Compare (and Why It Gets You Nowhere)
• In a Toddler's World: 10 Things Toddlers Know and Adults Don't
• Talk about it!