Keeping Up With the Joneses

Our neighbors came over a few days ago to meet Caden. Even though they live across the street from us, we don't see them all that often, so I had lost track of how well their oldest, who is a month younger than Caylah, is talking. And when I say, "well," I don't just mean that he's stringing together a few words at a time. By "well," I mean that this kid's vocabulary would put Webster to shame. He's using words that would stump middle schoolers at Scripps in DC.

Meanwhile, Caylah's conversational techniques are somewhat less advanced. I mean, when she says, "Mama. Baby. Up." with her arms outstretched, she sure looks cute, but I still need to translate whenever someone else is around so that they know what she's talking about.

And let's not even get into the tantrums. Oh, man, the tantrums. And of course they're at the most inopportune times. And of course everyone else's child is a perfect angel during those times when my daughter decides to channel Satan. It's all we can do to remove her from a situation before Hurricane Caylah wreaks havoc on everything around us. So as we slink out of a restaurant we can feel everyone's eyes on us wondering what kind of horrible parents we are that we would birth a child like that, who will obviously be in and out of juvies at 13.

The truth is that most parents are more than forgiving about things like that, because logic tells me that their kids have their moments as well. And while my wife and I wonder if boy genius' parents go home and talk about how my daughter couldn't find a coherent sentence with a nav system, reason does eventually prevail and brings us back to reality.

Still, the temptation to continually measure our kids against others is huge. "Why can't she walk sooner?" and "Did you see how much hair that kid had at two months?" are questions that make child-rearing more about competition than raising your child to be the man or woman that God is calling him or her to be. And I'm sure it won't stop. As Caylah grows up, we'll be wondering how her classmates did on their grades, why her teammates can kick a soccer ball with more accuracy, and even how her best friend's parents could afford to take that particular exotic vacation. Keeping perspective seems much tougher at times than keeping up with the Joneses.

What I have to keep coming back to, however (is my personal back and forth coming through clearly enough??), is that Caylah, Caden, and any other kids we eventually have, are going to grow and progress at their own pace. And unless we're raising the next Missy Franklin or Albert Einstein, there will always be someone else higher, quicker, smarter that we can negatively compare our kids to. But if we're raising them in a way that glorifies the Lord, we have to trust Him to do the rest, in His own time.

But, seriously, is "anachronism" that tough of a word for a two-year old??


How do you guys find it helpful to keep from that comparison game?