Little Green Monsters Strike Again

As Britanny and I stood in the “parent’s room” on Sunday we learned 2 things. The first is that the 11 o’clock service is extra crowded when the time changes. The second (and most important) is that as parents bring their babies to the nursery they experience sudden and strong bouts of what can only be described as baby envy. Baby envy occurs when parents have a mental competition between their baby and another, with their child ending up on the losing side of things. One such competition is the stacking contest. Maybe your baby cannot stack objects while the other shows a proficiency in this area. You want so much for your baby to cream the other baby in stacking, but its just not happening.

Every person who has a child has no doubt experienced a bout of baby envy- they look at another child and think “I wish my child could do that”. Case and point: there were 2 babies in the nursery (who, in order to remain anonymous, shall be named A and B) who were both 9 months. While A was perfectly capable of crawling, B travelled by rolling around (like a steamroller). B’s mother expressed the wish that her baby would just get on her knees and crawl already. I assume that this is because in B’s travels she has rolled over some painful objects, but who knows. I for one would be perfectly happy rolling around everywhere. Just saying- that would save me lots of $$ on gas.

Now each parent knows that their baby envy is unfounded- each child advances at their own rate. But for some reason, every adult throws this knowledge out the window, wanting their baby to be the winner, the most advanced, the coolest of them all. Its like high school all over again- everybody wants to be the one with the name brand baby. They want their baby to take the other baby out, to show them who’s boss.

The funny part about baby envy is that the children clearly have no idea that these competitions are happening, or that they are contestants in the weekly “Sunday Morning Baby-off”. Just because A can crawl and B can steamroll at 9 months won’t get them anywhere in the long run. Baby A probably isn’t going to end up running in the Olympics, and Baby B probably isn’t going to get a career driving a steamroller.

So now you know what goes on in the parent’s room. Baby envy may be illogical, but that doesn’t stop it from happening. While everybody is politely talking to each other, they are mentally screaming from the sidelines “Pick up that block Johnny! Smash her stack of blocks! You show her who’s boss!”. Most people think that the annoying parent who yells from the stands at hockey practice only became that way when their child starting playing, but they were wrong. Baby envy is simply the first symptom of “annoying sports parent” syndrome. Some of us grow out of it, and some simply do not. There is no known cure for the green monster of jealousy, but there is a way to ward it off- simply make sure your baby is the best at everything. Maybe yours can steamroll the competition away.