Compared to you, I’m good

One evening, soon after his transition from primary school to the 5th standard, my son came home quite excited.
His school was basically having them take baby steps towards the grown-up world. This was the year they progressed to writing with pens instead of pencils.
The year, when the attendant on the school bus no longer held their hands and lead them to the bus. Instead they were expected to find their own way to it.
This was also the first academic year when they were introduced to exams and the grading system. Up until now, my son had never been marked at the end of a test. Smileys and stars were what made the children happy.

I tried not to make a big deal about this at home. After all, marks didn’t determine your life’s success. Which does not mean I’m raising my children to be complacent or to avoid hard work. On the contrary, I’ve always encouraged them to do their absolute best when there still is time to do something about it. Preparation, I believe, is the key to success. But once the results are out there’s really no point letting them affect you, one way or another.

So I was quite surprised when my ten year old came home from school and rattled off a list of marks that the other children in his class had scored. Apparently all the children had discussed the marks that they had received.
I was suddenly experiencing a depressing sense of deja vu. I could remember in vivid detail, days from my childhood when my friends would do the same. What starts off as harmless curiosity soon snowballs into a rat race that never ends well, with competitive mothers getting unpleasantly involved. I shuddered as I really didn’t feel up to playing that part.

My only advice to my son that day was:
“For your own peace of mind, don’t be a human being!”

At his confused expression I explained,
“A giraffe doesn’t ask the other giraffe ‘which one of us is taller?’
A tree doesn’t tell the other tree, ‘I am more green than you.’
The tiger doesn’t tell the lion ‘I’ve had more kills than you this month.’

Nature allows every individual to grow at its own pace.
Comparison is an art that human beings have developed and perfected to a point of madness.
The only species with higher thinking and this is what we use it for?!

If you see a group of horses running, each beautiful creature stays true to its own stride, it’s mane flying magnificently in the wind.
The minute human beings have control over them, we set them up for competition and make money in the process.”

Comparison is our security blanket. We use it as a consolation mechanism when we fail. Because even though we didn’t succeed, compared to someone else, we still did better. Our self worth thus depends on someone else’s approval… or worse, someone else’s failure.
But the flip side is, it also robs the joy out of our success because compared to somebody else we will never be good enough.

Yes, competition is healthy. It sets a bar and motivates us to do our best. So does hard work. They’re both essential ingredients for progress and innovation. But what is unhealthy is comparison. And it’s a very fine line.
Competition is knowing where the bar has been set and striving to reach that touchstone or at least, finding our place before it.

Comparison on the other hand, is the passive aggression that eventually leads to one upmanship between peers, shaming, insecurities, envy, arrogance, even anger and sometimes crime.

Schools award marks as an effective method for each individual to realize their own potential, strengths and weakness. Comparisons based on them dilute the effect of both. The child’s success and his failure. In that moment of comparison, a child experiences a range of emotions from joy on receiving his marks – to arrogance on realizing he’s better than his classmate – to disappointment on realizing he isn’t as good as someone else.

And we propagate comparison everywhere.
Most often, as parents we don’t even realize we’re doing it. We use comparison as effective disciplining tools, as entertainment in birthday parties, as teaching aids.
Until slowly but surely yet another generation carries on this trend.

As parents, we need to make a conscious effort to stop asking questions like,
“Who scored the highest marks in your class?”
“Who is the tallest child?”
“How many friends in your group? Why aren’t you a part of the bigger group?”
“Your friend is so good at dance/football/skating/art…… You should try it too”

We need to demarcate between competition and comparison and break the vicious habit.
Every success and failure should be independent of one another.
Every child’s sense of self worth mutually exclusive from another’s.

One of my most favourite quotes credited to Albert Einstein is, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

This one really rings a bell too close to home. Let’s educate our children so that everyone has a basic knowledge of the functionings of the world. When our children study about the laws of physics or the decimal system, or the workings of the human body, let’s be satisfied in the knowledge that he is now equipped to use this education to better his life. Instead of making his answer paper compared to another child’s, the barometer of his education.

When a child scores 35/100 in maths, but 75/100 in English our immediate reaction is to mercilessly punish him to work harder and do better in maths. Instead, we need to understand that he probably should pursue a career related to languages, which is more his forte.

This is easier to accept when we understand that not every brain is designed to excel in the same areas. In fact there are said to be nine types of intelligences that determine every person’s skill sets, and each one is as important, though different from the next.

Musical Intelligence – rhythmic and harmonic, a love and talent for music
Visual intelligence – spatial judgement and visual memory
Linguistic intelligence – Verbal, using words and languages
Mathematical intelligence – logical, thinking systematically
Kinesthetic intelligence – ability to use one’s body
Interpersonal intelligence – communication and sensitivity towards people
Intrapersonal intelligence – self awareness and knowledge.
Naturalistic intelligence – love and interest in all of nature
Existential intelligence – curiosity about life

If we look around us, we will realize that whichever type of intelligence we are gifted with, should we choose to strengthen it and pursue a career path in it, there is room for success and growth in all.

So let us allow our children to identify and accept their own skills, play to their individual strengths instead of restricting them by having them perform to the strength of somebody else’s type of intelligence.

Let us parents promise, to raise our children as animals!