Why can't I be like them?

Do you ever think this? I certainly do. Why do we constantly compare ourselves to other people? Or am I the only one that does this?

Am I really the only one that looks across the room in a church meeting and thinks "How do they get their boys to sit so still when mine are rolling around the floor and running round in circles? Why can't my boys be like theirs?" Or "Why doesn't their two year old scream and have major disaster-zone tantrums when they say no to him?" Or "How do they manage to keep their house so tidy when mine is covered in piles of junk and everywhere I turn there are people making more mess?" Or "Why does their child stay in the pushchair and mine climbs out unless I tightly strap in every part of his body as if he has been mummified?" Or "How do they get their child to hold their hand while they cross the road when mine will sit down on the pavement and blatantly refuse to hold on?" Or "Why won't my child eat like other people's children?" The List of Why's is endless.

Then, after we have thought these silly old thoughts, we make the wrong assumption that these other parents are better at being parents than us. They must be. Its logical that they must be, otherwise how else would they be able to get their children to do these things that ours aren't? What we forget is that our children are ours. And they are different to other people's children. Our family is different to another family, and what would work with one will not necessarily work with another. That is not to say that we can't learn from each other and try out new things, but we have to do what will work for our family. Whilst we might pray with our boys in the mornings before school, another family will do it at bedtime. Neither of them are wrong or right, as long as it is being done!

While I write this, my delightful 2 year old is telling me "You stink of poo, Mum". My immediate thought is "Why don't other children say this to their mums?"! Why do we think that other people's children are so much more perfect than ours? It is a strange phenomenon us parents have to deal with..... or maybe I'm the only one - you tell me!