By Mei Yee
Parenting is not a competition. That may be an unpopular opinion, but it is how I feel. Now I didn’t always feel this way. I was once swept up with the whole “my child is behind others” and had the urge to push them to do more.
This happened when my daughter was a little over a year old (thirteen almost fourteen months), and the daycare she was going to at the time told me kids needed to be potty trained before she turned eighteen months. Which I thought was weird but then when I overheard other stories of how kids her age were already potty trained. I was like, okay, and tried to say that all kids learn and develop differently.
But it still left me wondering what I was doing wrong as a parent. Then hearing other parents talk about how their children were potty trained before a year old threw me off. Overheard one lady saying how her son was potty trained at six months old! I remember thinking, “okay, lady what do you just hold him over the toilet until he goes?”
Even with the smallest things like that, there was such competition to say, “my child is better than yours.” I didn’t know that is the reason why we had kids, but okay.
I did get her potty trained by eighteen months, though. But then it seemed to be something else that the other kids were doing that she wasn’t. The daycare she went to didn’t seem to help either, as they kept telling me how behind she was and everything. Later, to find out she wasn’t behind at all, I found this out from the daycare we moved her to.
Fast forward to my other child now being almost two. I was freaking out because I still had that mentality of “got to be potty trained by eighteen months.” This daycare told me how kids learn at their own pace and that she will get it one day.
No toxic environment, no competition between the kids or the adults. Not that I have seen anyways, and we have been using this daycare for nine years now.
Let kids be kids, don't make them compete against each other at such young ages. That is just my opinion anyways.
