RULE 63

Never compare children with each other

I know a couple who have two children – one (as so often) is predominantly very well behaved, and the other is frequently naughty. And to some extent it’s the parents’ own fault. Why? Because they actually say to the naughty one,^* ‘Why can’t you behave as nicely as your sister?’ If that isn’t a red rag to a bull, I don’t know what is.

There’s no way your children are going to have an easy relationship if jealousies and rivalries are allowed to grow up between them. So don’t ever let one of them know that you think they’re better at sport than the others, or not as clever, or funny, or talented. No, that doesn’t mean you have to pretend that they’re equally good at everything. That would be silly. But you don’t have to point out inequalities that they might not have thought about, and you don’t have to comment on any of their abilities in relation to each other.

That’s the critical thing. You can tell your child, ‘You’re really talented at art’, without telling them, ‘You’re better than your brother at art’. After all, why pick on their poor brother? It’s no more relevant than the fact that they’re better than Fred Bloggs at art, is it? But it gives the impression that you view your children as a co-ordinating set rather than as individuals. And in this case it tells their poor brother that he’s the shop-soiled one of the set.

We’ll see in Rule 67 that it can be a good thing to let your kids know what they’re good at. All I’m saying is that you should treat their talents and their shortcomings in isolation from their siblings. After all, it doesn’t actually matter whether they can cook, sing, trampoline, add up, take phone messages, speak French, tell jokes, brush their hair or anything else, better or worse than each other. All that matters is that they can do it.

Of course, your kids may not see it like this. Boys are typically the most competitive, but often girls can give them a run for their money too. Odds are your children will pester you with questions along the lines of, ‘My drawing’s better than hers, isn’t it?’ or ‘I can run faster than him, can’t I?’ So what you gonna say?

The answer is to do what you always promised yourself as a child that you’d never do when you were a grown-up, and duck the issue. You can say, ‘It’s hard to judge. You’ve drawn those trees beautifully. The detail in the leaves is wonderful. She’s used lovely colours, though, and her colouring-in is getting very good’. Or, ‘You should be able to run faster – you’re two years older’.