Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Watch out, the Competition starts in the womb?

'A' took a deep look at my face for few seconds and suddenly just like that he burst out a smile. He was five months old then. I had gone to his house for a navarathiri visit. Just as I was sinking in this moment with him, came a voice.

"Has he started making pa, na sounds , yet? ", asked another guest at the house.
(what a five month old baby does that?)

"No", answered my friend, A's mom.

"Oh, my Nithya has already started doing it. She is a month older than him. But she had already started saying pa a month ago."

"This one doesnt appear to say anything yet."

"Even my elder daughter had started saying few letters by 5 months. I think girls start so early."

oh man, isnt it bit early and quite ugly to start comparison now. A five month old baby for god's sake. He crawls around fine, is sitting on my lap right now. I have seen my share of babies with loads of cousins, nephews and nieces around to say this child was just doing fine. The whole life is ahead for this sort of competition. On the other hand, arent educated masses like us sitting in US with our Master degrees not believe in this sort of competition any more. I know, S and K(A's parents) dont want him to be in any sort of desi stereotypes of doctor, engineer. They really hope he is into sports one day, so knock out lady, his parents arent into the race.


3 comments:

  1. Comparisons are not necessarily a bad thing as long as you do it for the right reasons (is the child showing age appropriate development, to identify strenghts and weakness etc.).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Right reasons is what was missing here, Suman. It shocked more coz i thought if u just had a baby, u wudnt do that. to a large extent that is true too, but this one was different.

    ReplyDelete
  3. aha - in our society, competition surfaces long before one is concieved...what a waste of energy and time if you ask me...

    ReplyDelete