Q: My youngest son’s teachers and coaches are forever comparing him to his older brother, an exceptional child who excels at everything he does.
I worry that my younger son will grow resentful because he cannot keep up with his older brother, or that my oldest son will quit trying so hard because he does not want to hurt his younger brother’s feelings.
A: I think you are dealing with envy. The bottom line for envy is the extent to which we compare one person to another, one team to another, one anything to another. Comparisons lead to jealousies and anger.
Read Also
Starting a small business comes with legal considerations
This article sets out some of the legal considerations to start a business to sell home-grown product, such as vegetables, herbs, fruit or honey.
In your case, you are stuck with teachers and coaches comparing your younger son to your older one.
I am sure there are times when such comparisons might prove useful to your younger son, that he might find in such comparisons sources of energy for driving him forward to better outcomes. But those are more likely to be rare and I share your concerns.
Envy, for the most part, is not at all desirable. The less envy the better.
The antidote to envy is admiration. Admiration in its purest form has little or nothing to do with comparison. It is simply an appreciation for those daily successes that get us out of bed in the morning and into the splendor of the day.
Your first task is to make sure that both of your boys know how to admire each other. Son Number 2 admires son Number 1 for pulling off some magic in various algebraic assignments, not for having the best mark in the classroom. And the same is true in reverse. Son Number 1 admires son Number 2 for doing whatever it is that he is doing, like mastering the times table, not for competing with his older brother.
I hope you understand that when I ask you to help your sons admire each other for what they do rather than for climbing up a competitive scale, I am suggesting that you challenge the system.
I am asking you to prepare your sons so that when an errant teacher or unknowing hockey coach draws a comparison of one boy to another, each of your boys will have the resilience within themselves to shake it off. They will have the strength to simply appreciate each other and, in that process, appreciate their own selves even more.
It is a wonderful way to beat the stress of envy. But it takes time and patience and you are going to have to have a grain bin full of each to pull this off.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
