10 Jul The Comparison Trap: Why No Parent Has It Easier Than You Think
Sometimes it’s best not to inject yourself into someone else’s experience of parenting, writes Megan Blandford.
“You’re So Lucky”: When Parental Jealousy Creeps In
“My daughter threw her first tantrum the other day.”
I looked over, stunned. “Her first tantrum? At the age of two? Gosh, you’re lucky,” I declared. “My daughter threw her first tantrum at 11 months.”
The words had escaped my mouth unintentionally. It was not until I uttered them that I realised I even had that inner jealousy. I thought I had that side of me under complete control, given that I had long been on its receiving end.
My daughter was, theoretically, the dream baby: she slept through the night from the time she was a few weeks old. Ten solid hours of shut-eye, which, despite my being a little uncomfortable with milk leaking out of me all night, made me the envy of every mother I knew. There was one downside: convincing my baby to fall asleep was a battle. She would scream for up to an hour before finally closing her little eyelids and succumbing to the pure exhaustion. We tried everything to settle her: cuddling, not cuddling, wrapping, unwrapping, giving her a dummy, putting her in her cot, in our bed, in her port-a-cot, in different rooms. You name it, we attempted it.
Sleep, Tantrums and Silent Struggles We Don’t See
My frustration made me tense and uptight. I began to dread every sleep-time. If I were at home, I dreaded having to deal with it by myself, and if I was out, I hated others seeing what I perceived as my incompetence. I thought every mother should know how to comfort her baby, and my inability to do so had me constantly on the verge of a meltdown.
What I found when I was out and apologising to others for the very loud noise, promising that my baby’s period of distress would end soon, was that they tended to say one thing: “But you’re lucky. She sleeps all night. You can deal with the crying if you’ve had a full night’s sleep.”
No. I could not.
I began to wonder why people were saying this to me. In the privacy of my own mind, I declared them insensitive and crazy to think of me as lucky. I would think, ‘Well, you, too, have had a restful night, but you don’t hear me telling you not to complain about anything’. My nights of sleep might be great, but I certainly deserve them after my rough days.
The truth is that some of them did have a tougher time with their babies. Some had bad days followed by sleepless nights, so they wondered why I felt as though I was struggling. I also believe that my friends wanted to console me, to help me focus on the positives, to stop me from falling and breaking down. They genuinely had the best intentions.
New parents, or even not-so-new ones with non-sleeping children, are jealous of anyone who has had some reasonable hours of sleep, just as I was quietly yet deeply envious of those whose babies fell asleep blissfully without a sound.
I can see all this now, with the benefit of hindsight.
In a similar way to that in which the parents of a baby covet sleep or a peaceful means of arriving at said sleep, a toddler’s parents dream of a tantrum-free outing. The regular dummy-spits over being told ‘no’ are dreaded, and the ensuing judgement of how the parent handles the episode can make the paranoia set in (‘I’m sure they were all looking at me and thinking I’m a bad mother!’).
I admit that I feel envious of parents whose toddlers are placid in nature and do not seem to push the boundaries. The fits of temper and frustration that can only be declared so loudly and unashamedly by a toddler can be overwhelming and, at times, embarrassing.
And there I was, the mother of a veteran tantrum-thrower, telling a fellow parent that she was lucky, when she was struggling with this new developmental stage her daughter was experiencing – and understandably so. It does not matter when these events occur, only that they are new to each of us.
How to Support Fellow Parents Without Judgement
How quickly we forget our own experiences. I had so detested the assumptions made about me, yet, without even stopping to think, I had made one about another mother, believing her life to be easier than mine simply because her daughter’s personality was different from my little girl’s.
I wonder why it even matters who has the tougher life. We all experience the challenges of parenting in the same way that we all take the unbelievably great times without question.
So the next time you find yourself feeling a twinge of jealousy towards another parent, remind yourself of a couple of things: firstly, that all children have challenging aspects to their character, and secondly, it is a privilege to be someone’s parent, to be provided with the blessing of having a child to raise and nurture. There are many people out there who think how lucky you are to have this little person in your life.
Finally, when you find yourself telling another parent how lucky they are, be sure to clarify that you mean it as a compliment. Because we all need to be reminded of our good fortune from time to time.
