"Shirley M...have a goodaa \\;-)" wrote:

First off It sounds like anyone who would compare children of any age group
to say "why aren't you more like" is just plain bad parenting IMHO. I
don't care if they are minutes apart or years. Again, luckily we've never
had teachers compare the two even in the same class. Maybe good teachers, I
don't know, but neither kid cares in that sense. What they care about is
just being behind the other one in some way and that is something you can't
hide - unless you lie. Both my kids get a trip out of seeing how big/tall
or how much they each weigh. Yes, they get annoyed when one is above the
other but the doctor keeps telling Kathleen she doesn't want to be 6'3"
which is what Chris (at this rate of growth and shoe size) should be. She
seems to think this is ok. I think at 8.5 they can handle a lot more and
adjust better than children of 5. At 5 these things were issues and took a
lot of coddling to get them through the "bigger, heavier, stronger" issues
including loosing teeth. One lost before the other - how do you control
that or protect the other from the pain of being "behind." There really are
some things that all ages just must come to terms with without being mean or
nasty (which is what I think the "why aren't you" quote is).

Shirley


You really can't but you do the coddle/comfort routine until they
get old enough to understand. Your children seem rather good at
settling in to that understanding. My parents similarly treated it
calmly until we did too (mom remembers it starting as soon as one of
us crawled); we outgrew it before kindergarten but hit teachers and
other students making the dumb comparisons (and like all bullying, it
needed special handling). It's just that I've seen the constant
competing/comparing between siblings continued at the
Jr. High, high school and college levels. (The college situation was
one always competing while the other ignored the issue.)

When the classmates started teasing because one was in school and the
other is out sick, it is annoying. It's still the type of bullying that
can result in poor coping skills such as the obsession with being the
same; this happens more when combined with bad teachers. I will admit
the schools in general are getting better at handling the response
to all teasing.

Cindy Wells
(there are good and bad ways to handle comparisons; the majority of
parents and teachers probably don't have a problem finding the good
ways. I've just met enough of the exceptions to be very wary of the
issue with school. Since the odds of the other classmates making
comparisons and dumb comments are high, any comparison a teacher might
say can end up being badly misinterpreted by the child already
frustrated by other comments.)