5 Ways to Manage Competitive Parenting

As I sat watching my 13-year-old daughter’s practice at cheerleading last week, I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of new moms I see in town and at school events but they don’t run in the same personal circle as I do. All of our daughters are on the winter cheerleading team and were practicing some new stunts for their upcoming competition.

What started as a pleasant time waiting for the girls to finish soon turned in a new direction. As my daughter worked through some jumps and landings, the other two moms started talking quietly among themselves, and since I could overhear most of what they said, not quietly enough.

Apparently they felt my daughter wasn’t as flexible as one of theirs, and in fact wondered out loud if it was because she probably wasn’t taking extra dance classes. Not in the mood to entertain their comments, I kept my mouth shut and tried to enjoy what was left of the practice.

Mind you, this wasn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last time I’ve witnessed catty comments (meow!) about one of my kid’s abilities, but unfortunately these days it goes much further than that while raising kids in such a competitive age.

Remember that kids aren’t kids forever, and once they are grown, your time with and influence on them diminishes substantially.

Parents aren’t just overhearing a snide remark about their own or another child’s performances (both academically and athletically), they’re also struggling to keep up with the Joneses when striving to give their kids the same experiences that their peers are getting.

It used to be that a kid grew up riding his bike around the neighborhood and played on one or two recreational teams in town. Those days are long gone, however, and have been for quite some time. Now the average family is scheduling everything from pre-school flute lessons to chemistry tutoring in a second language, regardless of whether they have the means to do so or not.

Why the desperate need to make sure our kids are entrenched in the cutting edge of school, sports, artistic endeavors, and even community service occasions? Because we want our kids to have the best chance possible at excelling at all that they do—particularly where college admission is concerned. Unfortunately, sometimes we can let our competitive nature get the best of us and dictate just how far we’ll go to make our kids the brightest stars in the Universe.

It’s not possible to remove the many overbearing and competitive parents from the mix. Instead, Mighty Mommy shares five ways you can stay above the fray and manage today’s competitive parents without letting them get the best of you (or your kids!).

5 Ways to Manage Competitive Parenting Types

1. Don’t Overschedule for the Wrong Reasons
2. Limit Your Social Media Intake
3. Don’t Take It Personally
4. Celebrate Your Child’s Strengths and Passions
5. Address Your Own Competitiveness

Here they are in more detail.

1． Don’t Overschedule for the Wrong Reasons

No one is going to fault you as a parent for trying to provide as many enriching experiences for your child both in and out of the classroom. We want our kids to be as successful as possible and to make a positive difference in the world as young adults. It’s our job to raise independent, productive members of society who are well-rounded, caring, and could possibly be a future President of the United States, facilitator of world peace, or world-renowned researcher who discovers the cure for cancer—the list goes on and on.

Those are all wonderful intentions, but to what expense are we willing to enroll them in non-stop activities?

In an article for The New York Times, Columbia psychology professor Suniya Luthar shares some extensive studies on the role of extracurricular activities in children’s lives, surmising that it’s not actually the amount of activities we schedule that is the culprit.

“It’s good for kids to be scheduled,” she said. “It’s good for them to have musical activities, sports or other things organized and supervised by an adult. And, since most school districts fail to provide adequate after-school programs, there’s the big deal of giving parents a break. Problems arise when parents over scrutinize their children’s performance in these activities.

“You don’t just play soccer for fun or play stickball in the cul-de-sac, you’re vying for the travel team by second grade,” she said. “The only place where I say stop is where the child starts to say his or her performance determines his or her self-worth: I am as I can perform.”

Kids are overscheduled, but at the same time, many parents are afflicted with competitive outbursts because they have one goal in mind—raising a child who is the best at everything—and they don’t mind at all letting you, or worse, the child, know that.

In my episode, 6 Ways to Take Back Family Time, one of my tips is to scale back on kids’ activities. In order to create more down time with the family, it was suggested that you get your kids involved by asking them which of their extracurricular are their favorites and which they can live without. Here’s my key point from that episode:  

Time for a new rule: Set aside certain weeks out of the year—holidays and vacations, perhaps—that are non-negotiable family time. Assess situation by situation, realizing that even if your kids become famous athletes or actors, one holiday weekend won’t make or break them. But building their family relationships with their parents, siblings, and grandparents may be fostered by those times. Remember that kids aren’t kids forever, and once they are grown, your time with and influence on them diminishes substantially. Take the opportunity now to develop a close sense of family.

Just as offering your child a variety of enriching opportunities is necessary, equally as important is to offer them quality family time. Balance things out and you’ll be better equipped to deal with competitive issues from other parenting camps.

2． Limit Your Social Media Intake

This tip almost seems like a no-brainer, but it might possibly be the most difficult one for parents themselves to follow. One of the most common and likely places you’ll find Olympic-style competitive parenting being demonstrated will be on social media sites, particularly if photos—and even better, videos—can be posted to accompany the ‘brag.’

Listen, I’m not completely innocent when it comes to not sharing my proud mama moments with the rest of the world. Ask my Facebook friends, they’ll tell you. When my kid wins the school Spelling Bee or makes the Dean’s list in college—I’m all for spreading the good news. My reasoning is that if someone doesn’t want to read my post or take a gander at one of my adorable children having a “glory moment” they simply don’t have to look at it. I’m also realistic about how many posts are about my children. I have a life as well, and enjoy posting my new attempt at going a new shade of blonde or sharing recipes, jokes, and one or two of my columns.

But hang on, it’s not really that easy for some of us, is it? Curiosity gets the best of us when we see a gif posted with fireworks and the message reads “OMG, Congratulations to our amazing and most talented son on his acceptance to Harvard. He can’t decide between a law or medical degree but after we return from a 10-day cruise to the Caribbean, we will post his decision!”

Gag!

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with being proud of your kid—or sharing your pride,” says Wendy Grolnick, psychology professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. “Nature has prepared us (for parenthood) with this wonderful tendency to see our children as fantastic in every way, and that’s a good thing because it takes a lot to parent a child.”

The problem isn’t necessarily sharing the wonderful things our kids have accomplished, it’s when it’s shared with the wrong intention, or done as total overkill or with the wrong audience in mind, that can create hard feelings with other parents.

My theory is “out of sight, out of mind” when it comes to sifting through the cyber world of Facebook and Instagram. If you’re just not feeling like you can handle viewing other parents victories, big or small, stay away from all social media platforms and focus on your own family.

Remember that these platforms can often be a façade to showcase the life that parents wish to be living, and that things aren’t always as perfect as they appear, regardless of how exciting those photos of your PTO treasurer’s son taking cooking classes in Sicily seem to be.

3． Don’t Take It Personally

In an article for Psychology Today, Susan Newman, Ph.D discusses how to not personalize the things your friends say: “Make sure you don’t interpret your friends’ comments as relevant to you (or directed at you) when they’re not. For example, if a friend says ‘I’m doing X, Y, Z with my child,’ it doesn’t mean that you need to do that, or that they’re even suggesting you should be doing the same. We all have our own strengths as parents.”

As much as I’d love to give my children certain experiences (for instance, the chance to travel abroad and learn a foreign language in a far-off country rather than from classroom textbook), I know that it’s just not a financial option for us like it is other families in our community. So when I listen to them rave about opportunities as such, I can be realistic instead of jealous.

Plain and simple, remind yourself that nothing the other parent says has anything to do with you or your child. This wasn’t easy for me, especially while raising eight kids, because I am more exposed to other parents overzealous bragging due to the sheer volume of kids I have. But the more I gave myself internal pep talks such as Muffy’s daughter has every right to learn tandem sky-diving in second grade, and that it would not overshadow my child’s newfound skill of tying her own shoes, the better I got at being able to stop comparing and start enjoying my own child’s experiences and talents.

4． Celebrate Your Child’s Strengths and Passions

My favorite place to feel secure and loved is in my own home. When the rest of the world seems to be ganging up on me or someone in my family, I retreat within the comfort of my family and household and draw strength from being surrounded by those I love.

There are dozens of reasons parents enjoy boasting about their child’s accomplishments. Perhaps the child has not had many successes in life and has finally come into her own with a hobby or sport that she is now excelling at. Some parents can’t help but live vicariously through their own child’s endeavors and get carried away with too many details. Others feel the need to simply have a voice in their community and can’t figure out how to do so unless they use their child as a message of sorts. And there are plenty of parents who intend to see that their child is the best of the best and will talk nonstop about anything and everything he does, especially if they think they have an audience who is listening.

Regardless of why other parents are tooting their kids’ horns, you aren’t doing anything valuable or productive if you focus on all the fanfare instead of celebrating your own child’s strengths and passions.

It’s our privilege and labor of love to raise our unique children and encourage their individual gifts and passions.

If it’s your preschooler learning how to independently pick out her own clothes or your kindergarten child deciphering the alphabet—get excited about the milestones your own cherub is presently making and think ahead to the many new and wonderful discoveries you have with him that are right around the corner.

We aren’t all going to raise prodigies but it’s still our privilege and labor of love to raise our unique children and encourage their individual gifts and passions.

See Also: 6 Ways to Raise an Innovative Child

5． Address Your Own Competiveness

Now that we’ve discussed several strategies to help you rise above competitive parenting, are you able to take a good look at yourself and know that you aren’t starting some of the competition to begin with?

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself if you think just maybe you could be an over-competitive parent:

1. Do you constantly compare your kids to others?
2. Do you show off your child’s skills—no matter how big or small?
3. Do you over post all your child’s accomplishments on social media?
4. Do you focus on teaching your child to always be a winner?
5. Are you disappointed with your child when she doesn’t perform as you’d hoped?
6. Do you find it difficult to be friends with families of successful children?

Hey, we’ve all bragged about our kids to others from time to time—it’s only natural. We’re proud of our son for receiving straight A’s his entire high school career and then being accepted to three different Ivy League colleges. Our daughter usually lands the lead role in any play she auditions for and has only missed one goal out of two dozen as a freshman on the varsity soccer team.

Be mindful of who and how you’re sharing your kid’s accomplishments with. Although you may be chomping at the bit to revel in your child’s athletic prowess, gloating with the parent who has a child who can barely hold his own on the JV team is not the way to go. Maybe this parent is super excited to share that her son blocked a goal in a town rec game and the coach even bought them all ice cream because of their hard efforts. You can brag some other day. When you let the other person feel that they’ve won, it is you who is winning by caring enough to share in your friend’s son’s victory—something she might not be able to enjoy consistently or even again.

By keeping your own feelings of competitiveness in check, you’ll be better able to help your child be the best person they can be, not the person you think they should be.

How do you stay above the competitive parenting fray?  Share your thoughts in the comment section at quickanddirtytips.com/mighty-mommy or post your ideas on the Mighty Mommy Facebook page. You can also connect with me on Twitter @MightyMommy or email me at mommy@quickanddirtytips.com.