Mommy Wars

I think most parents are convinced that their own kids are utter geniuses. I know I am. It amazes me that LM can deftly pick up his rice puffs and manipulate them into his mouth, that he looks around for the cat when I say her name, or when I sign "cat" to him, that he waves to us when we leave and will patiently flip through pages of a board book for 15 minutes, pausing to look at all the pictures. And yes, my friends and I occasionally compare - some of them are crawling, some of them can pull themselves up on things, some of them are starting to sign.

I think it's natural to think your kid is a genius, though it's probably best to try and confine your assuredness on this front to people most inclined to agree, grandma, dad, uncle, and maybe the people still reading your blog even though it contains mostly mundane posts about your baby. Probably wise not wax on about it the woman at play centre whose kid is a month older and isn't doing what yours is. And I think it's okay to compare as long as you're not trying to compete - after all it's natural; e-mails often go around in my group of mother friends: "Any crawlers?" "Any teeth?" "How are you handling solids?" It's all part of the learning process and helps you know what might be coming next.

But I have one friend who is constantly telling me how wonderful and intelligent her child is, without a hint of irony, or any sense that she might be, well, a tad biased. Every wise and wonderful thing he has done must be detailed. And the milestones this wunderchild hit late? It wasn't because she couldn't do it; it was because she "didn't want to." Or she "thought it was dumb." Seriously.

And the worst part is, mum will then sometimes criticise other children; sure that other little boy might have crawled earlier, but he really sucked at something else that is obviously far more indicative of intelligence and he was nowhere near as "tuned in" as her little girl. The reality is, you see your own child a lot more, so of course they seem more tuned in. It was a shock to me when my sister-in-law saw LM laughing at her and said she hadn't seen him be that "interactive" before. To me he always seems that interactive.

I love watching LM start doing new things. I do tend to focus on the things he has done early and take them as evidence of his brilliance. But in the end, it really doesn't matter. I was an early milestone kid; D hit them late, as did my brother. And guess what, as adults we're all intelligent, successful and happy. And just as we were then, we're all good at different things. But the speed at which we toilet-trained, or cut teeth, or walked has not had any discernible impact on our current lives.