Anything Your Kid Can Do...

     …Someone else’s can do better.

     If you haven't seen the Brian Regan sketch on “Me Monster” then click the word "Me Monster" and watch it. A “Me Monster” is someone that can hear any story and one up you. For example, I might tell someone about the time I had dessert with Brian Houston at Hillsong. Then “Me Monster” would pipe up with how they didn’t just have dessert with him, but went golfing with him afterwards, carried his clubs, and hit a hole-in-one on hole nine, which was a par 5 hole. To note, I have no clue if Brian Houston even golf’s.

     When I became a dad, people would ask about what milestone Frankie was at. If she was crawling, talking, drooling, walking, had teeth, making model airplanes, solving world hunger, operating brain surgery, etc. What I didn’t know was that having a child was an unannounced competition.

One example is people would ask how much Frankie weighs to which I would reply with her current weight. But every once in a while someone would then tell me how their kid weighed that much in the first trimester, was born with three teeth, studying advanced quantum physics by three months, corrected Einstein’s theory of relativity at four months, and is fluent in English, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic by six months.

After I was astounded with their child’s progression in life I began to wonder what was going on. Especially when I realized this was more common then I thought it should be. There can’t be that many children in this world who are walking at three weeks old and getting their doctorate in linguistic studies by nine months.

No longer was competition just at work, home, or school, but with our kids as well. I’ll be honest; I’m not a huge fan. I am not worried or concerned with how my child compares to yours. Kids are just as different from one another in a family, let alone in our whole world. If your kid picks its nose and eats the bugger before mine, then God bless you and that salty treat.

Some might say, wow, your kid must not be progressing as well as she should be. Wrong. She is doing far better then I could hope or dream; I just don’t care about competing because it’s not healthy for the kids. No matter what my child’s progress is, I think they are beautifully and wonderfully made and I won’t be dismayed, my dear friend. That last line is inspired from Pigeon John and the book of Psalms, if you wondered.