Beware of the Competative Mommies

So, most of my close friends are aware of this, but the universe has shifted a little for me and I now have this normal relationship with my baby sister. We were on the phone yesterday laughing about how we don't dread each other's calls. It's nice to talk about cooking, budgets, husbands and what the kids are up to or in to. Another fabulous thing about this new normal adult sister relationship is we get to throw advice each other's way. She recently got her GED (super proud) and has been accepted to an online college program in the spring to start on her core classes, so she has been asking me for help on how to get started and I have been cheering her on. Have I mentioned how proud I am of her? I am. Super, totally, proud momma with tears in my eyes while fanning my face beauty pageant winner style kind of proud.

Yesterday while Katherine was helping me out with meal planning and recipes we got on the subject of how she has ditched her old crowd and is super picky about the mommies she hangs out with. That's when we got on the subject of competitive mommies. You all know them, and I bet that at one point your inner competitive mommy has come out and bared her well manicured claws. It happens, which is fine, as long as it isn't a habit. I'm talking about the habitual offenders. The clueless women who's children walked out of their vaginas, can read by six months, and have pretty much done everything better than your child, or at least accomplished it one week earlier than your child did.

It has taken me a few years to pinpoint these mothers and to decide to avoid them, rather than try and one-up their children with my own child prodigy. Usually they whisk into your life all chatty and fun, but soon you will find that you feel a little drained after being around them. It took me a few times before I really started paying attention to the conversations and I realized why. Now, before I go further I want to clarify. We ALL brag on our kids. This is how I tell the friends from the competitors: your friends will listen to you talk about your little superstar and then give your baby an honest compliment; your competitors will smile and agree, but then tell you how their child had a similar but better experience. Like I said before, once in a while is okay, but the repeat offenders are the ones you have to be on guard about. After a while I found that being around these moms actually made me a little tense about Natalia. Was her hair done right that day? Had she done something great recently that I could tell the other mom about? This was more of a subconscious kind of anxiety since I have not yet crossed over to certifiable nutville where these conversations occur as a running dialogue. That would be weird, but would make for an interesting blog. Hmmm, I'll keep that in mind when I do go crazy. Oops tangent.

Usually the charisma of the competative mommies are pretty strong and they are typically the popular girls of any group anyway. Yeah, that's right Natalia. That groupie stuff never goes away, it just becomes slightly more polite. So this is my advice in dealing with the competative mommies without becoming a social leper - wholeheartedly agree with the competative mommy. Ouch. Try choking that one down when you are watching your kids climb the monkey bars and her daughter is a double jointed Houdini-Tarzan wonder and your kid is "climbing" with her feet firmly on the ground at all times. One of two things will happen, the mom will either think you are the best friend a mother could have (since you agree that her child is the best EVER), or she'll move on to a mother who will feed her competative nature. I guess you could always suggest a dodge ball team to her. I have a couple of fabulous girlfriends who just won the Dodge ball Championship and it seemed all hard core. Smack talking, concussion causing, finger jamming/breaking fun. Not that I am saying you want to see competative mommy's fingers broken, or anything.

What it boils down to is this question: How secure are you with knowing your kid is amazing and how comfortable are you that your child is not perfect? What?! Perish the thought! But seriously, I know that Natalia hangs the moon in my world, but in the real world she has places she shines and places she needs to grow. That's okay. Really. I have to be okay with it because if I am freaking out or harping on her "needs improvement" categories all the time it is going to crack her confidence. That is the real cautionary tale to the competative mommy stories. How do you see your child when the play date is done? Can you agree with the competative mommy and KNOW that your baby is amazingly fine just the way she is, or do you start thinking about the "needs improvement" category. Natalia will figure out along the way places that she needs to work on. It is my job to build up the foundation of what she already has so her amazing baseline always out weighs the challenges of change.