Do you ever derive pleasure from the misfortunes of others? Like when your neighbor is not accepted to the private school that rejected you as well? Or when you discover that your friend’s kid melts down easier than yours?
It’s awful to admit, but as parents, many of us take pleasure in other people’s pain. It’s sick. It’s wrong. But on some level, it makes us feel better about our own lives. My kid may talk too loudly in public, but at least he can handle transitions. Or, thank g-d my kids not a picky eater. The list goes on…
Some of us do this with parenting as well, taking some kind of sick joy in another person’s parenting struggles as it make us feel better about ourselves and our own challenges.
Are we wrong to think this way? Perhaps. Some of us may rationalize that as long as we keep these thoughts to ourselves, we really aren’t hurting anyone else. Giving voice to these thoughts, either as criticism to their face or gossip behind their back, obviously creates hurt and harm.
Not to play moral police, just devil’s advocate, I wonder if giving thought to these feeling doesn’t intensify the competition and isolation between parents. Say for example, if we allowed ourselves a more compassionate, less competitive response to our parental peers woes, even in our own heads, might we feel less every man for himself and more united as a team? I don’t know the answer, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
One Comment
I just think this is a result of being too apart as families. I feel like we are part of a bigger tribe and our kids have to all succeed together. I feel sick with worry about their children when they doesn’t answer them in a public place in the same way I do with my own children.
The other day, our daughter’s friend (who we can call C) head-butted Scarlet out of anger. It looked very painful and it was the sort of thing that would make me take Scarlet home (if Scarlet had done it).
But C’s parent’s reaction (which was probably similar to what mine would have been) made me feel very compassionately towards C. I wanted to hold C and talk to her about why she did what she did. I wanted to pay close attention to her and talk to her about other ways to handle her anger… but I couldn’t. Scarlet had recovered and was playing with something new or I might have felt more of a need to comfort her.
I have known C since she was a newborn and I definitely cut her a lot of slack in my mind. She can be very naughty (more so than anyone else I have met her age) and more violent than my kids have ever been. But I love her like my own and when she suffers a failure, I feel it like she was my own child…
I think C’s mom knows this and therefore trusts me to occasionally discipline or set boundaries with C in a way that is a bit more parental than your average friend. Even when I am telling C she needs to stop doing something that is destructive, her mom knows the message is being delivered with the same affection I have towards Scarlet. I might even be a little anger but the motive is the same and so I get a little more control than someone else might…