“If we had no faults, we should not take pleasure in noting those of others.”
(Francois VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld)

If you’re looking for a quick pull-me-down, compare your kids to your friends’ perfect offspring. If you think your kids are inferior, then there you go.

However, this depression-maker works even if you find your own kids to be superior in their accomplishments, looks, social skills, etc. See, once we start comparing as a way to judge how we’re supposed to feel about ourselves (or by extension, our kids), feeling superior in one match-up leads us to seek out more:

“Wow, my Ethan is definitely turning out to be better looking than Aiden down the street…I bet he ends up even more handsome than Dylan.”

That’s the only possible ending point in a comparison journey—a false sense of superiority until your soul is crushed by an inevitable victor.

Peace begins with pause,