I know as moms, we tend to think our kids are amazing and advanced and beyond their years and so talented. We love our babies and it's natural. But do you ever wonder if they really are advanced?
With the ever-prevailing Mommy Wars, it's hard to really wonder if your kid is really advanced or if you're just inflating their accomplishments and shoving them in others' faces. It's wonderful to believe in your kid, but I think we often times compare too much just for the sake of validating our jobs as mothers.
Of course, I'm proud of Auds and her efforts and love her unconditionally. But it's come to pass lately that everyone who helps her - teacher, Sunday School teachers, children's pastor - has been raving about how amazing she is and how she's excelling and how special and different she is.
At first, I thought it was just them being polite. No one really wants to tell a parent that their kid is a bad egg or falling behind.
But I saw something yesterday that made me wonder if they're onto something. Auds goes to a very small private Christian academy and the teachers and administrators and parents keep up with each other on Facebook. I was tagged in a turkey that Auds colored in class. The class entered all of the students in a coloring contest.
Me being proud, I took a screen shot and emailed my husband. The screen shot included all of the pages from the class. He replied back that he agrees her Turkey is beautiful, but he kind of felt bad for he others. At first I thought he was downplaying her abilities, but then he said that the other kids' work looks years behind. No coloring in the lines, etc.
I told him that every kid has different strengths and maybe Auds will be an artist like I am. But then he remembered that she's the only kid in her class that got S+ on all of her criteria (they don't use ABC til later on, it's just not satisfactory, satisfactory, and beyond satisfactory in kindergarten). And she was chosen as the first student of the month for the school.
He said he felt bad because he didn't want the other kids to not feel like they measure up, but didn't want out daughter to think she was better than them.
Right now, we just tell her we're proud of her and love her no matter what. She has no idea of what people say about her and her work. But how do I handle that if she does start noticing? I always tell her that everyone is different and has different strengths, but how do I keep her innocent of being judgmental and the Mommy War competitions that abound?
How sad is it that I'm worried about this in prek? I just want her to learn and grow. Am I perpetuating the MWs by thinking she's advanced?
She probably IS advanced. I want to see the turkey now :)
ReplyDeleteI think we tend to see our oldest as advanced no matter what, because everything they do is new and exciting. We see each developmental milestone as an amazing accomplishment. I think by the time the other kids reach that age, we realize what normal is and how we may have been blowing the older kids' accomplishments out of proportion a little bit.
But I also think the oldest child tends to be more advanced in general, because of how much time we spent working with them compared to the others. I know my oldest learned things much earlier than my other children, because I had the time to sit with him and do flashcards to learn letter sounds at age two. There is no way I have time to do that with my two-year-old now. I don't think that means that my oldest is smarter than the others, just that he had the benefit of more opportunity to learn sooner. My younger children are just as smart, even if they don't know as much at an earlier age.
I can see the strengths and weaknesses in all of my children and I hope I am realistic about them. I know for a fact that my oldest is really intelligent. He has an amazing memory and ability to process/retain information. He also has an appetite to learn. My second doesn't seem to exhibit those skills yet, but he has other strengths. He is much more coordinated physically. Also, my oldest is so worried about always being right and having things in the right order, that I think he lacks creativity. For example, when he paints pictures he always wants to do it like the example or what he sees in a book. The horse HAS to be brown. But when my second creates, he uses his imagination. Horses are whatever color he wants them to be. He is much more creative than my oldest.
I don't think there is anything wrong with celebrating your child's strengths. Praise God for Auds and that beautiful mind He gave her!!! I think we run into problems when we are unable to recognize our childrens' weaknesses and that's when we start Mommy Wars. But that's way different than recognizing strengths, IMO.