Strollerderby : competi-mommy

Don’t Let One-Upmanship Become One-Up-Yours-Manship

makeitadouble — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:52:00 GMT

If you’re a mother or a father, which you probably are, and if you’re reading this, which you obviously are, then you’ve at one time or another experienced the brutal underground counter-culture of Parental One-Upmanship.

Come on, don’t play innocent, you know what I’m talking about. Your 11 month old takes her first brave hesitant steps and you rush to the nearest play-date, parent group, Gymboree, or Chuck E. Cheese to proudly announce your baby’s milestone accomplishment only to be knocked down a notch by parents extolling the unparalleled brilliance of their own ambulatory wunderkinds. “My Rosie walked at 7 months. My Charlie ran at 6 months. My Elizabeth did a back handspring out of my vagina.” You counter with a “Well she also said her first word this ….” And you’re interrupted with a flurry of “My Rosie said her first word at 7 months. My Charlie knew nursery rhymes at 6 months. My Elizabeth recited Shakespeare out of my vagina.”

Your immediate instinct is to skip the “One-Upmanship” and go straight to “One-Up-Yours-manship” and shout retaliatory haymakers at the sanctimonious antagonists you thought were your friends, but you don’t want to get pulled into a futile war of who’s child is bigger, better, faster, stronger. Your inner voice, the one that sounds like Keanu Reeves, presses the question, “What do you do? What DO you do?”

The Today show recently addressed why some parents engage in this type of exhausting and futile competitive banter. Well, the piece actually only concentrates on the over-the-top Moms for some reason, but I think we all know how competitive Dads can be as well (see Youth Sports + Living Vicariously Through Your Child + Inappropriate Juvenile Social Behavior)

Apparently the root of this evil can be traced back to personal identity insecurities and as a way to bolster a shaky self-image. Moms it seems, because again Dads were strangely left out of this psycho-mélange of aggressive parenting analysis, transitioning from the business world transfer that corporate mentality into their parenting style. In other cases the child becomes an extension of the parent and way to validate their self-worth.

Regardless of the cause, Today offers some sage advice to parents who don’t want a healthy relationship between friends to degenerate into a “the only way to make myself feel better is to make everyone else feel like shit” situation. Some suggestions are to empathize with the competitive parents and try to understand where they are coming from, to use non-competitive responses and to reduce the possible escalation of an exchange by not upping the comparative ante.

So, the next time “that” burgeoning stage mom brags about how her Elizabeth strolled from the birth canal rhythmically finger picking her umbilical chord like a Mariachi with a flamenco guitar, remember that it’s not about winning, it’s about appreciating ourselves and our families for who they are and about connecting with the people we love; and in our minds connecting with a perfectly placed uppercut.

Floating Babies: Fear-Based Parenting Meets Stupid Pet Tricks

Madeline Holler — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:37:00 GMT

I, too, raised a skeptical single eyebrow at all this talk of infant swimmers. Babies who swim before they can walk? That just smacks of competi-mommies and monkey trainers.

Then I watched this video and thought, “where do I sign?” (Note: Turn off the sound so that (1) you don’t have to hear the plinking sounds of water music and (2) you don’t get weepy when the baby, floating face-up in a swimming pool for five minutes (in his jammies!), starts screaming something about water.)

The lessons are expensive as hell and there’s still the risk of diarrhea and all that but still. A baby who can float on her back? If my kids could do that, they'd so be better than your kids! They could even join the circus! Or better yet, I could manage a little calm around all these damn open swimming pools here in Southern California.

Keeping Up with the Joneses: How to Fake a Flat Screen

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 20:02:00 GMT

You know it happens: You arrive with your designer-dressed child, Stokke stroller and well-packed Skip*Hop at a playdate, feeling happy you have on a little vintage number that's, for the moment at least, only slightly spotted with snot and organic whole milk, walk through the door and see the last bastion of coveted family home items hanging on your neighbor's wall. A flat-screen TV, taunting you with its Elmo peering over the fireplace in a child-friendly post-modern art mockery of the clunky box of television you bought at Sears only moments before the plasma revolution. Not to worry! Now there's no need to jones for the Jones' TV any longer.

Why not take the weekend and DIY up your family room? By carving out only a moderate-sized square from your scribbled-on drywall, you can create a sneaky little home for your standard TV and give the appearance that you're living it up like everyone else.

OK, OK...you got me. There is absolutely no way in home decorating hell I could recommend this project to anyone. Especially the Stokke sisters. The thing that slays me about this is that it is an idea I can totally see my husband scheming. That said, if anyone does create a faux flat screen in their home, please send Strollerderby the pictures so we can laugh, love and give you major props for "plasma" pimping in the best competi-parent illusion I think I've ever seen.

[photo credit: DIY Life, photoshop credit: Dan Chilton]

Bucket Head or Genius: Which is Your Kid?

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:36:00 GMT

Parenting advice can sometimes be laughably simplistic and reductionist. Nevertheless, obvious instructions like "don't leave your 7 month old unattended in the bathtub" serve to reassure us that all is orderly and well in the universe.

Furthermore, with all the competi-mommy confessions and helicopter parenting going on these days, the elegant simplicity of statements like "each child has different needs" and "children learn at their own pace" should be repeated like a peaceful mantra -- an antidote to Type A overkill.

People judge other people. And parents judge other parents. If we sometimes feel a little embarrassed of our ragamuffin bucket-head kids, it's really no wonder.

It may not be easy having kids who aren't stars of the gifted program, who lag behind other kids development. On the other hand, there is a sort of Beta Mom pride in the unwillingness to thrust our beloved progeny into the Fast Lane. Just yet.

Oh God, I've Become One of Them: Confessions of a Competi-Mommy

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 23:01:00 GMT

I joke (sort of) that I am going to buy Lil E one of those quirky kiddie t-shirts I saw once that says, "I am not a performing monkey." And then I am going to put it in the back of his armoire and save it only for the days he goes to my mother's house. You see, my mother, as every other wonderful grandma the world over, beams with pride over her one and only grandchild who can count to fourteen and does this booty-shake dance that involves actually grabbing and lifting up one cheek of his booty. She wants everyone she encounters, friends and cashiers at the dollar store alike, to witness this surge of adorable brililance in a three-foot human being.

She's (clearly) not the only one in the family who gets her brag on about our boy (as evidenced in above paragraph). I find myself slipping pieces of our mother-son conversations into the regular back-and-forth with the other playgroup mommies. And when I do, it is like some hormonal wave tsunamis my good sense and I spill an anecdote that I immediately know has cast me off with those other women in the sea of competi-mommy. The worse part is, that comment about how Lil E has already played his first nine holes comes so darn easy, even though I try very hard not to engage parents in their own competitive talk baiting and even though I feel quite happy to snark all over whatever they say once they are out of hearing range.

And this little human and flawed foible of parenting I keep casting off and reeling in is exactly why I gasped a little and laughed a lot when I read Rebecca Tyrrel's own plunge into competi-momminess. Appalled and seemingly unable to help herself, she broke her own rules about boasting about the kids and even got a bit pushy in the process. I might be rationalizing here, but maybe it is OK to let that parent-pride swell up once in a while, even to the point of self-abhorring obnoxiousness, so long as we admit it at some point. So long as we do our very best to keep it real.