Wednesday - The Rivalry

[ninanevermore]

Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about how being a parent can bring out a competitive streak in a person. My stepsister has a son 3 months younger than my own son. In today's cut-throat world, we all strive to be above average. Average means not good enough to be any better. I am here to state for the record that my son is perfectly average. He is the average height for a boy of 17 months, he began walking at the average age and he is learning to talk at the average speed. He is smack-dab in the middle of the baby bell curve.

My step sister's son, Reese, is larger than average, is already stringing words together in little baby sentences ("Daddy go?"), and is on the well-above-average side of the bell curve. I'm starting to dislike the little man.

All my son has to fight back with is his personality and his hair. Both are far superior to anything that Reese has to offer.

I don't subscribe to the blank-slate theory of development. Anyone who has spent any amount of time with children knows that a person's basic personality traits are present from an early age. Laid-back people start off as laid-back babies and high-strung people begin life a high-strung infants. My point is, Reese is a jerk in the making. In a few decades, he will be that guy who steals your parking space just as you are about to pull into it, who talks loudly on his cell phone in restaurants while other people are trying to eat dinner and possibly the kind of person who kicks puppies. He will also be bald (more on that later).

My son, though apparently average as far as size and cognitive gifts go, is extra nice. He has slept through the night since he was a few months old, whereas Reese still wakes up screaming every few hours. My son rarely cries, while Reese had colic and still spends most of his day in a dark mood. My son laughs a lot and is curious and playful. Reese cries a lot and is temperamental. I shouldn't care that Reese is already speaking while my son points to things but does not articulate them. For example, my son doesn't say "Mama" but he can point to me when you ask where I am. That must count for something. Personally, I think it's just his Scandinavian heritage coming through. We are people of few words, at any age.

Still, I'm not the only one who feels competitive. The last time my stepsister was in town with her family, her husband, Dale, was sitting across from me holding Reese while I was holding my son. Dale is a pretty nice guy and I enjoy his company. We were discussing the boys and where they were developmentally. At almost every level, Reese was at the same point or more advanced than my son, in spite of his being younger.

Dale sighed and said of my son, "Well, at least he has hair," as he rubbed Reese's little cue-ball of a head. I noticed that of what sparse hair there is on Reese is growing in the same male-pattern-baldness pattern that Dale has.

I smiled and ran my fingers though my son's head full of fine blond hair. I have been cutting his hair since he was 5 months old. If I hadn't, it would be down to his diaper by now.

"Yes, he does, doesn't he?" I said. I almost added, "And 30 years from now, he'll have more hair than Reese again," but I though better of it.

Hair is not the most important thing in the world by any means, but you score your points where ever and how ever you can.

And did I mention that my son has a very nice personality?

Comments

[highlandwolf.livejournal.com]

Yes, kids do bring out that competitive spirit. You tie so much of yourself into everything he is or does. Betcha he catches up on all those others too. My kids have been all over the charts on those infant and toddler bell curves, but end up exceeding all.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I think he'll catch up, too. I probably would feel this competitive if it wasn't family (worse, step-family). It just surprised me to find myself feeling this way when I've always prided myself in not giving a damn about this kind of thing.

you score your points

[erisreg.livejournal.com]

yeah, that's as old as mankind,..;)

Re: you score your points

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

(*sigh*) So much for motherhood being some kind of noble calling; becoming a mother has made me petty and evil. :P

some kind of noble calling;

[erisreg.livejournal.com]

it's always been an instinctively driven perpetuation of the species,..but that doesn't mean you can't instill some nobility into the results,..:)

[anayasmom.livejournal.com]

:D

[creactivity.livejournal.com]

"Well, at least he has hair,"

Did he actually say that...with the "at least" and all?!

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

:D He did. Dave is very self-conscious about his own (lack of) hair, and I think he's a little sensitive about having apparently passed the baldness gene on to his son. .

[creactivity.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it's just that the "at least" seems to discount everything else about your son. I suppose he wasn't saying it in all seriousness...but damn.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

He didn't mean anything by it. He actually is a very nice person. I make a point not to get offended when I know no offense is meant. It struck me as a funny thing to say, and nothing more. If my son were on the slow end of the bell curve (rather than the middle of it), I may have taken umbrage.