I think I am going to go nuts. My once very close 1st cousin enjoys calling me only to compare her child to mine and vice verse. They live in a very metropolitan area, so her baby (same age as mine) goes to zoos and aquariums more than my country baby. My baby can look outside and see a variety of wildlife and we take her fishing, so at age two, she can tell you the difference from a bass and a rainbow trout.
I’ve been working with my little girl to teach her colors, counting to 10, shapes, ABC’s and even a little bit of my hobby…astronomy. She knows Jupiter, Earth, and Saturn when she sees them in a book or on the internet. She knows we are in “space” living on Earth. She knows the moon and the sun and points them out. We aren’t super rich or pretentious or trying to push out 2 year old baby to speak Mandarin and six Cantonese dialects, so by a lot of standards, we are slacker parents. We’re big on common knowledge, sharing what we as parents know with our kids and age appropriate basics. My cousin pays like $250 a week to put her child in some high speed little kids academy remniscient of the rival preschool on Daddy day Care. I never call her bragging about my baby, because I feel there’s no reason to brag. All kids are different and special in their own ways. Her baby talks to people on command on the phone, but mine doesn’t, even though she speaks well. She’s more fascinated with how this device has a familiar voice inside of it. Now if mine saw you in person, she would talk your ear off. Bottom line is, my cousin thinks that her kid is like the guru of babies, and if your kid is not following her pattern, they are handicapped or deprived.
I want to tell her in a nice way that I’m tired of this comparing crap. I don’t return this behavior to her, I try and change the subject but she always wanders back to, “So, how big is you baby now? I remember she was such a fat baby. Are you still feeding her pureed porkchops?” Or, “My baby went to the zoo yesterday and she could name so many of the animals. What is your baby doing these days?”
And to think, back in the day…she and I used to be like twin sisters!!
