Siblings comparisons and expectations
Posted on January 18th, 2008 | by Daddee |If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Now that we have two children, I find I have started to do something I never wanted to.
“Was Caitlin ever this noisy / demanding / small / colour? Did she ever need this much cuddling / changing / feeding / diapers?”
Having grown up being the youngest with siblings whom have been performers in school & their chosen careers; & being something short of mediocre myself, I have always been weary of the consequences of being compared against. My “philosophy” in parenting has thus included the avoidance of comparing my children against one another.
Yet I find myself already doing exactly that. This, when Caleb is only just over a week old.
I can say at the moment these sentiments have generally stemmed from frustrations of Caleb not sleeping longer than an hour, ALWAYS because he was left on the bed (ie not in someone’s arms where he’d sleep so peacefully), his weight, the level of his cries, how much he takes in per breastfeed, etc.
But I dread what other factors would be popping up from now on..
“When did Caitlin start walking? This one’s a bit slow / VERY early isn’t he!”
“When did Caitlin start talking?”
“Caitlin used to (still does) sleep through the night; man, he’s a handful this one…”
“Hey! Caitlin’s first words were Daddee! What’s wrong with you boy??!“
3 Responses to “Siblings comparisons and expectations”
By Moomykin on Jan 18, 2008 | Reply
You know, try as we might, comparing our children is inevitable. Sometimes because we are jut trying to remember how we coped with certain issues, sometimes because we fear that our memory would fail us (with regards to our older kids).
But because my boys are actually quite close in age gap (18 months apart), I really try to let both have the same kinds of rights , restrictions, rewards and “punishments”. Still, I know both are very different and am not too stressed about when they achieved what. E.g Micah was really fast in speech, while Max has mazing hand/feet-eye coordination. Character wise also very different.
Just enjoy your baby as he is and enjoy your toddler as she is.
By toddlerdaddy on Jan 21, 2008 | Reply
I think it is unavoidable that we will compare the progress of the second child with the first child. Same as we compare the first childs progress with the progress of their friends.
Luckily for me we have two exceptional children and they far outshine all those aorund them in all areas
Also if we didn’t compare them how would we know which was our favorite? - I shouldn’t say things like that or someone will take me seriously one day