Believe it or not, I'm a very competitive person by
nature. No matter what the battleground
is, I'm stricken with an overwhelming desire to win. Board games?
I love them because I always feel like I have a shot at winning. I try to analyze the concept of the game and
figure out if there's anything I can use in the rules to make it go my way more
quickly. That is unless it's something
old-school like checkers, backgammon, or mancala. Bethany will smoke me every time without even
breaking a mental sweat. Video
games? If I'm playing in person against
a buddy, I definitely want to win. If
I'm playing online against a random opponent, well, I want to win, but I'll
probably lose to some middle-schooler in their mom's basement. Sports?
Well, let's just say that I'm not super-duper athletic so I get kind of
bummed out at failure, but I'm still going to try hard to win. Moral of the story, besides me not being good
at anything? I'm going to try and win at
anything I do, even if it's a non-expressed race to address the most Christmas
cards (By the way Bethany, I'm pretty sure I won).
 |
| My competitive streak will hopefully never take me to this place... |
Unfortunately, one part of me being competitive is that I'm
already attempting to live vicariously through my daughter. Um, what does that mean Jesse? Well, I'm glad that you asked, faithful blog
reader. First, a little background. Ellie is one of many children that we know
born this year. The (in)exact number is
around eighty-six if you're wondering.
So of course, we're extremely excited that Ellie is going to have so many
little friends to grow up with. Bethany
may or may not have already mapped out the next three years of play-dates on
her calendar. I may also be working on
ideas of how to scare the inevitable boyfriends that will show up on our
doorstop to take Ellie out on a date.
"You will open the car door for her. You will open the door at the restaurant for
her. You will show her the utmost
respect. You will not try and make a
move at the movie theater. I still will
be right here cleaning this vacuum when you get her back here at 10:00." (I
don't have a gun so the vacuum is the best I can do unless I want to sharpen
the kitchen knives instead).
So part of what comes with raising a child is watching for
milestones. Rolling over, crawling,
standing, walking, etc. The problem with
this is that I'm already having my competitive side come out regarding
milestones with Ellie and other babies her same age. I'm wanting her to reach every major
milestone first. I mean, I already have
visions of Ellie becoming grand champion of the baby crawling races. That's a thing, right? Ellie's cousin is only three weeks older than
her, but I forget three weeks is a lot in baby time. So while he's sitting up on his own and
feeding himself, I tend to look at how Ellie's not doing those things and get
nervous about how she may be falling behind.
Then, I find myself looking ahead at milestones that she could hit
first. There's that nasty competitive
side at play again.
I know that I need to start just focusing on my own child
rather than everyone else's even if it's hard at times. If I'm constantly comparing her, even at this
young age, then I'm going to start setting goals for her that she may not be
able to live up to. And thus, she will
hate me when she gets older for all of the undue pressure I've put on her. Then, she'll never come home from college for
Christmas break unless I bribe her with a fancy car. Oh no, I'll be living in the 1998 Christmas classic, 'I'll Be Home for Christmas'. #DaddyWrite
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