Compete with yourself and root for everybody else.
We all find ourselves in competition with other parents. Maybe we see how our car compares with everyone else’s at school drop-off, or we dress up really fancy for that school fundraiser, hoping to turn heads. Very quickly, that kind of competition can transfer to our kids: we want to make sure they have the same gadgets as their peers; we look at what colleges they can get into compared with their friends, and we start to push them to be valedictorian or captain of the baseball team or president of the student council.
This is not just a superficial competition but a stupid and possibly destructive one (as those Varsity Blues parents serving prison sentences should remind us), not just because it’s one we’ll inevitably lose—there will always be someone richer, someone hotter, someone whose kids are more naturally gifted—but because it can rub off on our kids in the worst way.
If you’re going to compete with anyone, we should tell our kids, compete with yourself, to be the best version of yourself. Compete over things you actually control. And make no mistake, we should take that advice ourselves.
Compete with yourself to be more present, to be kinder, to have more fun with your kids . . . to beat what you got from your own parents. Focus on the stuff that’s up to you, that can be an example for your kids as they grow into the people you want them to become.
—Candice Millard