Competitive Parenting

Fantastic goals! Might I add one more? It is not enough for your child to excel mentally. They must also play an instrument (violin comes to mind… or cello?) AND be on an athletics team. But not football, because they could get a concussion. If you opt out of sports, best make sure they learn a foreign language. We wouldn’t want our dears not to be well-rounded, you know. Or at least “weller-rounded” than the other parent’s kids.

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Can’t stress enough the importance of # 7 and #8!
Also, points for doing the homework/assignment for your child? Extra points if the science project you did wins an award?

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Did you just attend a parenting meeting or something? Some social event with just parents? Cause you seem a tad overwrought.

I know these people are out there, believe me I find it easy to come by the guilt of parenting in the real world by just opening my mouth and being honest about how I’m raising my kids, but I have not run into too many of them yet. Maybe they multiply in grade school? And I live in CA so you know the naturalists are here somewhere. Maybe it’s because I hang out with multiples parents and we have to be realistic, or at least more so than some?

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Did you consult Jenny McCarthy in writing this?

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Shouldn’t television be forbidden somewhere in these rules? And how many points for looking down on parents who fall short of your own personal ideals?

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Oh dear. I lost points this morning… My youngest had to be at school EARLY to go on a bus trip, and we FLEW out of the house … school is across the road, literally. How can the kid who lives across the road be late, for heavens sake? And worse, I was wearing mismatched jammies AND mismatched socks (one solid, one stripey) and no bra. It was cold. So I rushed into the playground where the BEST mummies were all ready to go on the trip, kissed my boy goodbye and left (in my socks, with cold nipples and flimsy jammies, you understand) as the horrified super-mums looked on.

I am now officially in negative points.

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Wow, 0/0.

I guess I’ll have to put my children up for adoption.

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Okay, that should have been 0/10. Fingerslip and I missed it.

Does that mean I’m into a negative score?

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Okay…looks like I’ve failed Competitive Parenting 101…

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Ah #7. I wonder if shrooms and peyote are natural remedies for depression.

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Two of our kids have two children of their own now. As (former) parents, it is sometimes difficult for us to resist the temptation to “help” with a little friendly parenting advice from time to time, but we instead bit our lip and remain silent. Some of the items listed come remarkably close to the surface on occasion.

Conversely, my wife and I view that it is our JOB (no, our DUTY) as grandparents to undo and undermine the primary parent’s at every turn and foist all manner of fun and silliness at every opportunity upon them with reckless abandon.

We love our grand kids, but the best part, when they get too much for us, it’s time to go home to Mom and Dad, waving “bye bye” with one hand and a Mango Cosmo in the other. GRAND-parenting is fun.

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Strangely enough, losing at this particular competition makes me feel like a better parent. My kids were doomed from the womb.

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I’ve been doomed from the beginning. Don’t I get extra points for having children with serious health problems??

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Around here. competitive parenting involves enrolling your kid in as many sports as possible and structuring your entire life around them. If I believed in God, I’d be giving thanks daily that my children are not athletic.

I had to give you this link, when I posted about my own son’s arachnophobia. I think you’ll relate:
http://incognitoagent.blogspot.com/2009/08/speaking-of-spiders.html

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A good list. But I do have a lot of empathy for parents who feel like their child went from totally normal to totally autistic after an injection. I am NOT saying the injection caused it. But I am saying I understand why these parents are looking for answers.

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I was doomed from the start. I’ve done everything wrong.

Strangely, I feel quite good about that.

Must have something to do with having two snobby sisters-in-law who are perfect mothers of perfect children.

I wonder how disappointed all of these mothers will be when their kids grow up to average adults, just like the rest of us?

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Well, this settles it, then…I suck at parenting. I was in the running with the homebirth/breastfeeding thing, but I dropped the ball after that…I used diapers, put the kids down, took them to McDonald’s, and don’t give a hoot if they have my belief system. Oh, well. Maybe in my next life…that is, if I believed in reincarnation….

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If raising my kids to think for themselves makes me a bad parent, call in CPS. As for the rest of the list, I am if course, perfect. Sneer.

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See what y’all should have done is do it my way….spit out a bunch of kids all at once. Then go out in public with them all by your lonesome. Because in the court of public Mommy opinion, wrangling triplets while not actively having a nervous breakdown automatically qualifies you as Mother of the Year. And when they are too big for the triplet stroller and it isn’t obvious on sight that they are indeed all the same age, I plan on having TRIPLET tatooed on their foreheads. Now pass the Barney tape…and the cheetohs.

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Long natural painful labour: 1
Talking about how painful the labour was instead of how beautiful: -1
Breastfeeding: 1
McDonalds: -1
School registrations: -3 (Haven’t even decided on a school)
Value system: -2 (I have to create one for myself)
Grandmoms’ opinion of my parenting skills: -5

I’m going to stop now before I start crying.

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LOL

This was so ME as a young mother. I was certain that helicopter mothering=excellence [aka bragging rights] in offspring.

It took another 8 years for me to realize I had almost nothing to do with it. I said fuck it and relaxed.

But competition has reared it’s ugly head with my eldest son (a lawyer, had to add that lol) and his marriage.

Since, according to him, his in-laws are collectively the Second Coming, I am perpetually in put-up-your-dukes mode. Albeit with a smile on my face.

It has definitely brought out the worst in me.

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I didn’t see any points for daily mileage earned driving kids to multiple extra-curricular activities. Is there not a “Mom’s Taxi” clause? Because the moms I talk to love to brag about their mileage martyrdom.

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