Did you ever compare your child’s behaviour or academic progress with other “bright” children of the same age group or even older, successful people and think that it may guide your child on the same prosperous direction? If yes is the answer, then you’re doing the complete OPPOSITE of what you’re trying to achieve. The outcome of this will be the lack of self-confidence as well as pressurizing their child greatly. “Kids develop at different rates. There are early developers, slow bloomers and steady-as-you-go kids in every group, so comparing your child's results or performance can be completely unrealistic,” states Michael Grose, an expert on parenting. This quote suggests that each and every child grows up at a different pace, and you just can’t turn them into some mechanical robot that will be follow the footsteps of a famous or intelligent individual. In addition, you can’t even guarantee that if your child will obediently do whatever you tell them to, or if the outcome at the end would be that they will come out exactly smart and fortunate as them. As a previous experience, every evening after dinner my mother and I would watch TV together and normally, we would come across some random reality TV or talk shows that feature affluent people. Afterwards, they would go on and on about how their life was either in poverty or a difficult situation before- BAM! they invented something that changed the lives of the community around them, or they found an new species or place that wasn’t discovered before, etc. By now, you probably get my point already. My mom will then begin her one hour lecture about “How you should start worrying about your life young lady,” and “You should get into the top school on this planet when you’re older,” by just one sentence “See how that guy/ girl is so successful? Look, look and listen to their life story, blah blah blah.” Then she will start rambling on about how hard it was to pay for my school fees every year. So in the future, I will have to be very successful to “pay” them back… I agree wholeheartedly with her opinion, but there’s one major component in my mom’s idea that I very strongly disagree with. Which is the way she compares me with basically every famous or intelligent or smart people who appears every time she turns on the TV! It basically turns very exasperating to hear after one or two times. Now visualize yourself having to listen to that everyday… Ugh. Dreadful, just plain dreadful.

Every newborn child started of their adventure with nothing in their mind. They’re filled with brimming innocence, a sense of curiosity and most important of all, powerful creativeness flowing in their minds waiting to be unleashed. They’re then brought up, hopefully under the loving care of parents or guardians. When children gets older, they will be introduce to new experiences that will affect their future in one way or another. That might be a new hobby or skills that they have acquired, and they would probably want parents or older siblings to acknowledge and praise them. From a mature perspective, you adults should accept your child for who they are; support the good decisions your child made in their life and not constrain or prevent those big, precious and significant life goals from becoming true. It can literally crush a child’s only dream if you do that. When I was young, I would often ask my parents to take me outside the park to play or book sales to increase my knowledge of the outside world. The answer would always be “Oh, I’m sorry sweetie I’m busy right now,” “Go some other time, I’m tired,” “I promise next week we’ll go okay?”. My hopes would then brim over the edge, and I’ll start to anticipate for the upcoming Saturday. When the day came and my mom came home, I immediately begged and whined her to go quick before it gets too late. What do you think the answer will be? “Oh... honey did I say that? I’m sorry I’m very tired so let’s just stay at home shall we?” …. A child’s heart and soul was crushed from that day on.

YOUR. CHILD. IS. THE. ONE. WHO’S. DECIDING. THEIR. LIFE. Need a repeat? No? Okay, back to the topic. Yes, I’ve said it. Your child is the one who’s gonna map out their future. NO, not your child’s friends, not the teachers, not your family relatives or the neighbors next door, and definitely not YOU. Yes, everybody that I have mentioned in the previous sentence does play a major role in your child’s life as well as affecting parts of it with the diversity of perspectives, creativity and thoughts floating in their minds. In my school life, I was always the one who makes the final decision as to join any ASAs, participate in different sports, etc. Although that “job” would look like it belongs to parent’s responsibility, they’re actually not the one who’s gonna resolve this at the end because my parents didn’t proceed into my school and demand to meet my teachers on whether I should join this or that or neither at all. On the other hand, at home my mom and aunt would decide the actions for me even though I disagree with it most of the time. I would have to turn back to my “docile, respectful” kid who can’t even speak up because of the harsh regulations and rules set onto my family!
Although the contempt of comparing against other people shouldn’t be used to downgrade a child, those two “tools” of contempt and rebuke used by parents are quite popular nowadays, where grades on report cards and tests scores matter for the sake of a better future in one of the top university and/ or college. Statistics showed that parents with high expectations of their child would most likely affect him/ her to get into the top schools when they grow up, as cited “Using data from a national survey of 6,600 children born in 2001, professor Neal Halfon and colleagues discovered that the expectations parents hold for their kids have a huge effect on attainment… Parents who saw college in their child's future seemed to manage their child toward that goal irrespective of their income and other assets. Results suggested that 57% of the kids who did the worst were expected to ATTEND college by their parents, while 96% of the kids who did the best were expected to GO TO college,”. Well, this have proven that comparing young generation’s together actually brought out a positive outcome. Although this argument seems plausible, however much this system might get your child into elite institution; it does not regard the fact that he or she might suffer from lack of self-confidence, therefore causing absence of social skills which are very, very, majorly crucial for the development of an individuality to be able to contribute towards our society; too much stress can bring forth negative consequences such as depression, digestive problems or even worse, heart disease. Furthermore it can create tension in your family as well as straining parents-and-child relationship. After looking closely at both sides of the issue, one must be mistaken to not be able to understand that this way of motivation isn’t quite healthy for the recipient.

To sum up, older individuals shouldn’t use discrimination methods such as judging one’s child against another to make them feel bad about themselves and then think that this will make their child “work harder and try to advance themselves up”. NO, it’s just gonna bail in opposition to YOU, the main culprit who started this. They will start to harbor feelings of uselessness, despair and apprehension for not being able to meet up with their parent’s sky high standards. In the end, it will hurt the child’s mental pride more, and if you keep this judgement daily, can spiral towards the wrong direction causing traumas or even severe depression.