Mama wars

Last night, I got caught in the ‘My kid is smarter than Your kid battle’.. and my kid totally won. What sucks is that I tried my best not to participate ~ but the war was throttled on by my neighbors who knew my business WAY too well. Me and my big mouth!

Long story short – Bill & Eileen (across the street) are enjoying a visit from their Grandson, Michael (and less importantly of course, his parents). I took Kenzie for a flirt with Michael, who’s about 5 weeks older than her. Michael has just started walking but utters no words yet. We walk over and Kenzie immediately says Hiiiii, and Gull (Farsi for flower, remember??). She says these over and over. And then woofs at the dog, says Orb to the water hose, growls like a lion at the little boy, and points to her nose when someone asks Michael if his nose was itchy. Good grief, the little show-off! These items were duly noted by Michaels-mommy who then made further inquiry about Kenzie’s vocabulary. I told her a FEW of her Farsi/English words, but purposely avoided the whole list. And then Eileen shouts: “And, Kenzie knows sign language too...” and "I’ve heard her say"...and...and...

But, to keep things on an even playground – I should mention: Kenzie has an irrational fear of vacuums and Michaels-mommy says he HUGS vacuums.

I felt terribly guilty. Michaels-mommy looked crushed. I felt that I totally needed to reaffirm her in that ...all children develop at their own pace...kids tend to master one milestone at a time – it appears that Kenzie’s strength is speech and Michael’s is hugging vacuums- er, I mean walking...boys tend to talk later than girls...yada, yada, yada. I don’t know if she accepted any of it, or if I made more of a spectacle out of the situation than need be.

Why can’t we just live in our own little bubble??? Then we’d all be the smartest, best, prettiest, most successful people in our own pressure free world. Until someone else’s bigger bubble collided with and popped ours, I guess...

UPDATE: Tonight we went to the mall for dinner and let Kenzie play in the little kiddy area. We were placed on the opposite end of the spectrum than above. Ms. K towers above the other children who are several months older than her, being that she's got all the TALL genes. So, everyone assumes that she's older than she is. Yet, even the 10 month old was walking and Ms. K hit the ground on all fours, all but once. Mommies were telling me -- "don't worry, it's better that she doesn't walk yet." I found it strange and hard to reply -- as I'm NOT worried. She walks when she wants to. Yet, all those mommies felt the same strange sense of pride coupled with guilt when comparing their children to ours. The psychology of this parenting thing is quite complicated, no?!