Friday, February 20, 2009

Mommy of 2 -- Lesson # 2

Do not compare your kids with others or others with your kids or whichever way, baseline is do not compare kids. Period.

Each kid blossoms in his or her own pace so just let them be. If you have concerns, talk to the doctor but don't compare. If you are proud of your kid's over achievements you are mucho welcome to brag about it but again do not compare.

If you are a third party do not say stuff like "A's son cannot read yet but my niece started reading at 2", ok if you are saying that out of ear shot of A&A's son or the niece, I don't know what the protocol is.

Now that I have two kids I keep repeating such stuff to myself so that I do not ever compare them, maybe we discuss their differences but not compare.

But there is a thin line between comparing and motivating.

Like say Big Sis S wouldn't want to towel herself dry after her bath, her claim was she was too small for such tasks and so I should do it for her. So then I started drawing on examples of a friend's daughter who had started drying herself at the same age. This girl is looked upon by Big Sis S and so it was easy to convince her that such tasks are doable by 5 year olds.
Now what did I do just now, did I compare or motivate ? Or did I compare to motivate ?

So, what is your opinion, what is the fine line ? Or is it that I should not take such devious routes to motivate ?

Some harmless motivations can lead to funny results though. A few weeks back I has seen this post of ChoxBox. I loved the story idea and what n3 wrote.

Since Big Sis S now writes small sentences at school I asked her if she would like to write a story for me and then I told her she could write one on "How The Tiger Got Its Stripes". She readily obliged, took her writing tablet to the table and was back in a minute. So there was the "Shortest Story of the Century" illustrated by the author and duly signed off as "By S..."

I was !!!:D


Photobucket

It says -- "I think they Paint it"


(Cross posted @ Desi Momz Club)

I am closing comments here because I will be discussing and replying to the same post @ DMC