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Why I No Longer Compare My Baby To Others – by Fi Morrison.
My son is 11 months old and just started crawling on his knees and pulling himself up onto furniture (well, sort of). This should be a time of excitement and celebration – and bubble wrapping the furniture – but I am partially doing it through gritted teeth. I know that seems like an awful thing to say. However I’ve fallen into the trap that so many new parents do – comparing my son to the other babies around him, that I seem to have lost the spark of appreciation I had at the beginning.
When my son was in the early stages of his life, I relished every little thing he “said” and did. Even when he would fart I would be excited (how did my life come to this?!). It was the miracle of new life and the rapid development that babies go through which I could not stop marveling at. To me, my son was absolutely perfect.
In fact, in the early days, I must admit (embarrassingly enough) that I thought my son was a bit cleverer than other babies. From day one, everyone commented on how alert he was, and how well he could hold his neck up. He seemed to start ‘chatting’ a lot earlier than other babies I knew, and so I ignorantly celebrated his cleverness.
Then, as the months went on, and as I watched my friends’ babies start to roll around the floor, I realised that my son wasn’t doing those things. I started to think that he was falling ‘behind’ the other babies. And my initial feelings of pride were quickly replaced with jealousy and frustration. I was ashamed to feel this way. Why couldn’t I keep being proud of my gorgeous little boy? I’d heard it all before: “Babies will do things in their own time,” and, “every baby is unique”. Heck, as a teacher, I used to tell parents these things all the time! But there was something preventing me from seeing it this way. All I could see was the things other babies were doing that my son was not.
Of course, over time my son has started to do the things the other babies have been doing. As I mentioned earlier, he is now practising pulling himself up on furniture and crawling on his knees, and I’m extremely excited about this. But as is always the case, now that my son is doing these things, the other babies have now started to toddle around furniture, or walk independently. It has had me thinking: Will this comparison game ever end? Where do I draw the line with comparison and just let it go?
Unfortunately, I’m a pretty big perfectionist. I have always had unattainably high expectations of myself, and I’ve done my son the biggest injustice by placing similar expectations onto him. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever move on from comparing him to others, or whether I will unfairly subject him to this for the rest of his life. However, there have been a few glimmers of hope, and a few ways I’ve worked around comparing my son that I hope to continue working on in the future. I hope these suggestions can help some other mums out there too.
As hard as it has been sometimes, I always try to celebrate the successes of the other babies in our group. Even if they are running circles around my son, I have found it very humbling to make an effort in congratulating others on reaching their milestones. I don’t want to be a negative Nancy, and I want to show support for our friends in the same way that I would hope they would support us.
I also aim to celebrate all of my son’s successes. I’ve started writing a letter to him each month of his life, within which I write his achievements for that month. In the letter I include things such as his movement skills, language skills, foods he might be eating, the amount of teeth he has, and what his sleeping patterns are like. By covering such a range of areas, I really can see that he has developed well across many developmental areas and that I don’t have to worry about him being ‘behind’. In fact, it helps me to see that he does some things well (like being vocal) and other things he is average in (like movement).
Around the 6 month mark, when all the babies were rolling around the floor and my son wasn’t, I started to get concerned (perfectionist shining through!). We were at the doctors due to illness, when I raised my issue with him not moving. Our doctor (who was very blasé I must say) reassured me that I didn’t need to worry, and that as long as he was crawling and walking within the appropriate age ranges, he was fine. Sure enough, a couple of weeks later my son was rolling all over the floor and we couldn’t keep up. I’ve found checking with the doctor – even if it seems like a silly concern – has helped me to stop worrying and comparing and just focus on my son’s development.
Now that my son and his friends are almost a year old and the variety of skills they are learning is starting to broaden, I am finding myself less concerned with what the other babies are doing. I’m learning that my son has a very unique personality – with his own strengths and weaknesses – and that I wouldn’t want to change him in any way. Seeing him develop into his own little person has really helped me appreciate what he can do and realise that he will get there in his own time.
Have you found yourself falling into the comparison game with your child? How did you work through it?
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