To find competitive parents annoying

[Pushmeinthepool]

I mean, what exactly is the point in being all competitive and trying to get oneupmanship on other parents?

I met up with a friend yesterday who has a DS the same age as my DS (13 months). The conversation throughout our meeting was peppered with competitive statements from her about her child.

Things such as:

"Oh, so your DS isn't walking yet?? REALLY? Oh dear. X has been walking for ages"

"I can't believe how happy and easily pleased your DS is to just sit there in the buggy. X is just so advanced, no way would he just be happy sitting there doing nothing. He needs stimulation"

"My DS is talking so well, his understanding is fantastic. I bet you can't wait until your DS is at that level"

Now, just to clarify, apart from walking, our DS's are identical in ability and how they behave. I didn't bother to get defensive and say "Actually he can talk" or whatever, because, really what is the point in even going there? It's fine mentioning these things in conversation but not in a way so as to put the other person down.

I've met so many competitive parents over the years since I had DD1 really and I can never quite understand their mentality.

At the end of DD's ballet class last term the teacher came over and handed me an invoice for the next term as I had lost the one she posted me, 3 mothers came over and demanded from DH what we had been given as THEY hadn't got one. DH said "it's the bill, do you want it?" and tried to hand it over. Ah, the looks on their faces...

DH does gym with a few children with very yummy mummies and she came out saying "X and Y just go on and on about whether they are first or second in the queue, why are they so bothered about what place they are in the queue?"
I was tempted to reply "because their mothers are teetering on the brink of lunacy" but managed to alter it to "some people think that sort of thing is important".

DD played a game with child of alpha mummy: child says "I will win this as I have a bigger brain than you and am really talented at games" to which DD replied "no you aren't". Which saved me the trouble.
Yes, she beat the pants off him. Yeah!

Whoops, the schadenfreude...

It's pathological. I've met several pushy horrors through DD's gymnastics - the incident about the medal described above does not surprise me.
A couple of people I know are even like this with their dogs. One woman, who also has a vastly over-parented 18yo DD (who has just not got into the university of her choice, so I keep out of their way) claims to own the world's most intelligent and talented dog, able to communicate all sorts of information to all and sundry a la Lassie. I've never seen it happen.

Another man I know from our dog park, whose dog is admittedly very well-trained and placid, seems to enjoy comparing her to other, less refined animals (ie mine). We get gems like "Lolly doesn't put up with daft dogs who bark at the others", after Lolly has just sat on someone else's puppy.

I haven't met many competetive types but I have seen enough to know they exist.

Mostly though in real life I find parents tend to downplay their children in a self deprecating way which is quite nice.

I always find it a bit embaressing when DD does 'the best' at something - I am proud of her but never quite sure what to say to other parents.
If someone says to you ' god your DD was great doing that - won it easily .. and she got the x prize didn't she' it is hard to say anything that doesn't make you sound like a twat.
I have tended to say 'yep - don't know where she gets it from but we suspect a mix up at the hospital'

The thing is the competetive parents clearly see their childs talents as reflecting on them - which means they may as well be after credit for the size of their feet or the smell oftheir farts.

I am deeply proud of my DCs when they are kind or polite or generous. Most other things are lucky genes

i was surprised attack by one of those mothers whilst out having a coffee. complete stranger. bit of general baby chit chat then she started getting competitive. was not prepared for it.

get over yourselves and you child(ren)!! they are children if they are happy leave them to it.

my DD could have been in the situation where she would not be able to do anything at the "right time" if at all. Im just glad she is growing healthily. In actual fact im the opposite and want to keep her a wee baby forever. if i could have permanant six month old i would be happy. enjoy them being babies!!

" One woman, who also has a vastly over-parented 18yo DD (who has just not got into the university of her choice"

One characteristic of the hoverers, whose children are not merely incipient Nobel prize winners but also musical prodigies and also potential Oscar winners and also great sportswomen is that they forget that even in these days of grade inflation, A Levels are still the hardest exams you'll ever take, and are certainly the most important.

At most universities, if you look 2:1-y but screw up one paper, you'll be treated leniently; at A Level, the marks are the marks are the marks, they're all there is to go on. There isn't a special form you can fill in to get a few extra marks on your A2 Maths paper because you were out the previous night playing string quartets.

I've heard of several children at my daughters' school who didn't get their required grades, where the parents are somehow in denial that there's any linkage between that and spending every spare hour on music/drama/sport/DofE/whatever. It's good to be as broad as possible but there are some points in your life when you need to pay the ferryman now in order get the boatride to where you want to go, and year 13 is that time.

One thing I've observed is that there are two interesting groups of parents when it comes to support. One understands how the system works, realise the benefits of extra tuition and resources, and if their child is showing signs of needing extra help make sure it's delivered. Which is entirely right and proper: it's what the resources are there for. Another regards the suggestion that their child needs extra help as a personal slur, and fights the process. In a school with a wide social spread, the latter group came from every background, while the former group was pretty exclusively middle class.

This reminded me of last year at dd's first parents night, we had gone through the pleasantries and they her (very lovely) teacher started to look very worried and a bit edgy, it transpired that she wanted to put dd on an IEP due to her speech problems, largely to help the transfer from Foundation stage to KS1 and her getting speech therapy in school rather then having to take her out, this was something dh and I were very keen on and was something we were going to ask about when the time for questions came, I just can't get over how worried she looked, like we were going to lamp her one for just suggesting that dd needed some extra help, we found it funny but then very sad.

ummm,the competitive parents are awful,
i know one who will only dress her dd in designer clothes as "shes a fashonista in the making" (shes 11months old)

but,there's this mum at a toddler group i go to who keeps telling me how advanced my dd is
her dd is the same age and apparently not doing half the things my dd is when this mum is watching...
its a bit weird really...
never quiet sure what to say,the standard
"they all develop at different rates"
is starting to sound a little old now...

My SIL is like this, always going on about how advanced her son is, how much stimulation he needs etc etc (he's one). She is MAD though and had/has terrible PND so I do somehow think the over emphasising and the PND are related as I think some of it is due to her own insecurity about her ability as a parent.

And I hate the martyr mums too, I read here of someone who proudly said she and he DH had not been out alone in something like FIVE YEARS!! Not healthy IMO. A friend wittered on once about how she couldn't wait to get home from a night out to see her DD, I couldn't wait to get to the bar to neck a few more G&Ts myself!

And the contrived-crazy mums. My sis is a bit like this, she told me today how she only sorted out her kids uniforms on Tuesday and realised the skirts were not right, they needed sweatshirts etc etc. Seriously, be a bit more organised. You just look lazy, disorganised and bonkers not like some super hippy cool mum.

I wish I had some more mum-chums so I could encounter this a bit more for my own amusement!

I've only met one competitive parent, that I can remember. A lady with newborn twins, who invited me to go for lunch with her after dropping in on a breastfeeding group. Before we'd even got to the cafe (5 mins walk away) I had learned that she had two older boys, was home educating them both, had refused all intervention with her twins and delivered them vaginally at 40 weeks, had breastfed her older two exclusively till they self-weaned, preferred to use slings as they were so much more natural than prams etc. etc...all rattled off before she had even asked mine or DS's name, let alone before I'd had a chance to ask her any questions that might have naturally produced these sort of answers.

Parent however you like but don't bore on about it because you think it makes you look superior.

I agree, Cyteen; the woman I was referring to is exactly the same, producing all this information and all these boasts about her son, but with no relevant conversation beforehand, she just sort of comes out with them.

I do think that people that are competitive are trying to bolster their own self-esteem because they feel inferior, so I suppose I should feel flattered really that she thought me worth "competing" against

the worst I ever encountered was a competitive dad.

His little girls were lovely, but he was awful. Avoided him like the pest. He'd say things about his dds' achievements which were not actually even true (top of the class in reading or level such and such in something or other and therefore way above other dc her age when it was more average) so that I wondered why he said that or bigged their achievements up unnecessarily. Mind you he was generally unpleasant, not just about this

cyteen parents like that make me want to push my pierced-ears baby around in the cheapest Argos buggy as she sups on her bottle of Pepsi, fag in hand (mine not the baby's).

But then I am very childish

Worst I came across was a dad as well.

His children were talented, his son in DSs class won a sports scholarship and older ds won a music scholarship. But DS's friend always had to be better than everyone else, told lies about things ie he had the complete set of football cards, which had only been out a week etc.
DS and friend were coming out of school with their piano reports and comparing them.
Other boy had been learning a year longer than DS. DS had got an A1 for effort and other boy didn't get any As or something like that. Dad got really upset and started going on that they couldn't compare because they were different stages.

I felt so sorry for this boy as the pressure at home to succeed must have been immense.

"home educating them both"

It's not the case that everyone who home educates it a self-obsessed twit. But it appears that every self-obsessed twit home educates...

Once at a M&T group, struggling to make conversation with a woman I hardly knew, I asked, "Will XX be going to playgroup soon?"

"No," she sighed, "He's too advanced."

I don't know about that. The HE families I know are not at all obviously competitive. I suppose because they are just getting on with what they think is important for their dc but not in direct comparison to other dc of the same age IYSWIM. I suppoee they may be quite competitive in terms of achieving exam results/getting into certain universities, don't really know but they don't seem to talk about it

IMO it is having your dc at school with others that promotes competitiveness - and since the school compares dc all the time (ability tables, report cards etc), the parents get swept up into it.

he is too advanced..... lol
sigh

Actually come to think of it competitiveness starts way before school, doesn't it? Must be inbuilt then

YANBU.

I remember an aquaintance I had with a ds 5 months younger than mine. My ds walked at 10 months hers not until 19mths (which seemed even later to her as my ds was 2 by then iyswim). I spent the wole 9 months telling her to be grateful as its a PITA chasing afetr them everywhere and he'll walk whens he ready. 1 week after her ds walked she said I was right and thanked me for being reassuring and not competitive.

Physically my ds was ahead of the milestones but behind in language. He was far more interested in hurtling around than stopping to discuss things. (6 now and still the same!) But his behaviour is good and he knows lots he's just not aceademic. I actually find my friends say to me 'he'll catch up' but I often reply maybe but someones gotta be bottom of the class. I don't want ds to have the pressure of having to excell. He knows he has to try his hardest tho or he'll have my boot up his arse

pushmeinthepool I 'd be tempted to say 'its just as well he can walk so well I hear Oford Uni campus is huge'

"Actually come to think of it competitiveness starts way before school, doesn't it? Must be inbuilt then"

I suspect that the idea of "milestones", with a poor understanding of the error bars on those, doesn't help. The "expected" time of walking/talking/whatever is pretty much pulled out of the same thin air as alcohol units and BMI (ie, with no research basis whatsoever), and even if they were based on some real studies you'd also expect massive variation between individuals. Unfortunately, a lot of health visitors (etc) obsess about anything "late", even though in principle 50% of children will be late and the date they're being measured against is arbitrary anyway.

Just read through this thread and laughed out loud at "too advanced for pre-school".
Once when visting a former friend of mine befroe Xmas, I couldn't help noticing the vast pile of presents under the tree - all for their baby boy who was 2 months old at the time. When I commented my friend said "oh he needs a lot of stimulation - he is bored with the toys he has". He was 2 MONTHS OLD!!

Tokyonambu -- you've just reminded me of (I think) Keith Joseph, or whoever was ed minister way back at the intro of the National Curriculum, saying,

'Standards must be raised. Half of all British children are below average at reading...'

Actually, on that particular topic Joseph wasn't mad. At risk of sounding like a particularly boring statistics lecture, you need to have some evidence before you assume that a population is normal, and even more evidence before you assume it cannot be anything else whatever you do.

livinginhope I found (and there are studies that support it) that young babies are very stimulated by.. well... existing for starters. I had drawn faces with black marker pen on white paper and they were amazed by the contrasting colours. Colourful plastic cups did the trick as well. But then, my children's IQ is onyl average, unlike obviously your friend's baby.

Bored with his toys at 2 months FFS!

Will you lot be quiet - my six month old is studying for his GCSE maths and you are disturbing him.

He's an indigo child.

[ducks and runs for cover]