When you were just starting out on the road to pregnancy with your first did you have any idea about how competitive it could be?  Or have you not experienced any competitiveness at all?

From my perspective I've had comments along the lines of "not sleeping thru yet? you need to try x, y and z" or "my baby walked at 8mths - isn't yours walking yet?". Sometimes my mum doesn't help by telling me my sister and I were potty trained at 18mths yet my DS (just turned 3) is still hit and miss on that front! Even now with DD at school, there is some competitiveness amongst the mums as to whose child can count to 100 etc!

x

Oh yes soo much competiveness.......how much weight you put in pg, what your measuring, how big ppl think  going to be, what kind of labour you had, what drugs you had, weight of baby, how much hair............it is completely ridiculous!!!!!! When I had my first child I felt so inadequate as everyone I knew had a natural birth etc and I had emergency c section - there were certain individuals that I knew and met after having my DS that were so smug - last thing you need with PND!!

I do not bother at all with it I treat my kids as individuals and although I may compare my two children in terms of milestones (not in a bad way more conversational really and when my youngest does something reminds me of when my oldest did it). I don't get involved in any of the petty conversations that used to come around in doc surgery or baby groups even standing at the bus stop!!!!!!! I used to smile and say thats nice but not engage in a tit for tat conversation. I think most mums like nothing more than talking about their kids it's just a small few that feel the need to gloat.

My son has now completed his first year at school and is one of the youngest in his class. His teacher is more than happy with his progress and it's more important that he's happy and enjoys school rather than what he can and can't do compared to his classmates.

Lisax

I feel very lucky that my NCT group is a really supportive group and although we have all talked about what our kids have been doing there isn't a sense of competition, everyone is always genuinely pleased to hear about what the other's children have been doing.  I think it might be that generally we are all quite self-effacing people and are more likely to be smiling wryly over what our kid isn't doing rather than boasting about what he is.

Or it might be that because I don't feel this is a competition I don't notice it when other people are doing a bit of one-upmanship and just take it as understandable maternal pride :-) 

Kelli and

T'Boy(2 years) and T'Other (7 months)

I tie myself up in knots mentally evaluating my dd to her peers - it's a very bad habit I have - but I tend to focus on what she's not doing - her speech is slightly behind some of her peers - instead of what she can do.

My bug bear at the moment is being told which pre-school I must send her too and being looked down on because we've decided to send her to a local playschool instead.

Nikki