LET ME BE ME

The other day I visited one of my cousins. It had been long since we met and so was very nice to sit and chat with her. She has two daughters aged 10 and 8. Lovely girls, well groomed , well mannered. I could sense the pride in my cousin when I praised her daughters. We were sitting in her room and she asked her daughters to get juice and cookies from the kitchen. We went back to our chit chatter when suddenly a loud crackle made us both sit upright with a jolt. My cousin called out her daughters and asked what happened. I followed her to the kitchen and we saw that her younger daughter had dropped the cookie tray and the bowls broke. My cousin suddenly lost her temper and started scolding her younger daughter. I tried to calm her down but she became very hyper. She yelled at her younger daughter and said, “ why can’t you be like your elder sister. Has she ever broken anything. Learn something from her.” The poor girl had tears in her eyes and went to her room crying. I took my cousin back to her room and tried to tell her that it’s ok , she’s just a kid, she was helping right. What if the bowl broke. She was very upset and told me how her younger daughter is always up to some mischief or the other where as the elder one is calm and quiet. The younger one is not as good in studies as the elder one. She is always arguing back where as the elder one never does that.
             I felt bad and couldn’t stay for long in her house. Friends, this is what happens with a lot of us specially when we have two girl or two boys. We compare them without thinking about the effect that it would have on the siblings. How my cousin reacted was understandable but what she said was not. Siblings may share the same home, same room, same genes and sometimes even the same jeans also but they can be as different as complete strangers. Both have a different mindset, different personality, different behaviour. They cannot be compared in any way. They would show different interest in studies. They would perform differently in different fields. One cannot be asked to be like the other. They have different individualities.
                                                                          Little bit of healthy competition is ok as it helps us to understand that how good or bad we are doing as parents and also how our children are going up with their development. We can compare one’s achievement with the other without neglecting the capabilities of the other. It’s perfectly ok to do so. It’s only when we become judgmental in comparing that has a negative effect on the children. Such kids who are compared loose their self confidence even before it starts shaping up and they start to doubt their potential. It harms the parent child relationship as well as the sibling relationship. One starts to hate the other if he/she is continuously told to become like the other.
         So, We should not ever compare our kids on any criteria. Each child is special in his/her own way. Just let them be themselves.