On comparing

Helen, Patrick and I just got back from a lovely week of vacation. We spent it with my parents. One of my sisters took a week off as well and my nieces (my other sister's children) were there as well. It was a fantastic family vacation and a nice way to spend some of the remaining wheat harvest time (around here, wheat harvest means daddy isn't around much...being away makes missing him easier).

During one conversation my sister and I were reminiscing about high school. She was a freshman when I was a senior so we had most of the same teachers and very similar experiences. I was talking about a teacher that I really, really liked. She said that she really, really did not like him because he was always saying, "why can't you be more like your sister" or "why don't you do (whatever) like your sister did."

Oh. That's probably not a great way to do high school. I never really thought about how the trail I blazed might change things for my sisters. Some things about being the oldest child are great and, apparently, getting to be the first kid through the school system was one of them.

Then I started thinking about how this translates to my parenting experience. I guess I compare Patrick with Helen a lot. Not that I mean anything bad about it...actually, I'm just observing things that seem different about the two of them, neither bad nor good. Still, Patrick doesn't need to grow up hearing that he's so much bigger than Helen or that he's stronger than Helen was at that age or that Helen did (whatever) so much earlier than he did (or vice versa). They are two different people, lovely and individual. I need to remember that and not constantly compare the ways that they are different or the same.