Win With Flynn

Hypothetically speaking, you could be at your kid’s baseball game on a Friday night when the coach calls him out for not paying attention. Coach tells him to “get his head in the game.” The kid is embarrassed, so you get embarrassed. It’s this transference of emotion that happens with people you love. It feels like the finger is pointed at you.

Timothy Gallwey wrote, “If a mother identifies with every fall of her child and takes personal pride in its every success, her self-image will be as unstable as her child’s balance.” 

That goes for fathers too.  

From the outside, it feels like the coach’s kid never has an issue. Coach must be saying all the right things at home.  

From the inside it feels like you’re not setting the right example. You wonder if you should have read those parenting books instead of watching reruns of Seinfeld. 

So, you do the parent thing. 

“Hey bud, get your head in the game.” 

To which he will respond. 

“I know. Coach LITERALLY just told me that.” 

And of course, the kid is right, but I’m trying to play my part.

No doubt this will continue throughout adolescence. 

“Hey bud, you failed the chemistry test, you need to study.” 

“Seriously, old man. I was there.” 

And into adulthood. 

“Hey bud, that girl is crazy, maybe don’t date the crazy ones.” 

“OMG, shut it, have you seen her?” 

You can’t go back and do it again. You can’t unscramble the egg. Sometimes kids need to learn things firsthand. Parents too. And part of that learning is avoiding the attachment to every bump, stumble, struggle, and choice, your loved ones make.

The key to doing that is avoiding comparison.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “comparison is the thief of joy,” and I have no doubt he came to that conclusion while watching Little League baseball. The problem isn’t a missed grounder, the problem is something happening right there between the earholes. Comparing my kid and myself to all the other families around us. And I was doing that while only understanding the smallest fraction of their experience. 

Can you imagine coming to any conclusions about a person or a family based on a grounder? It’s almost as silly as coming to conclusions based on their car, their clothes, their job, or their college. 

See what i did there?

Comparisons are tricky that way. They slip into your thinking. We’re conditioned to do it with the kids from day one.

“You know our little Billy is in the 78th percentile for height and the 93rd for weight.”

“You don’t say!?!”

“Yep, sure is.”

It’s hard to stop comparing. Even with the knowledge that this comparison is stealing all of your joy, you may still be watching the other kids and the other parents and thinking, they have it all figured out.

When you feel that way, life has a way of showing you the flip side. If you’re paying attention.

Hypothetically speaking, it could be Sunday morning and you could be running late to church because one of your kids won’t put their pants on. 

So, you arrive late and most of the seats are taken, and you end up in the pew right behind the Pastor and his kids who are sure to be perfect angels, totally focused on what’s being said.

You’ve got concerns about sitting there but it’s too late now. You’ve got concerns that the now fully clothed kid might have a gripe or two as the sermon goes on. That the service might not hold their attention.

You’ll stumble over the lord’s prayer and end up wondering all over again if you are doing parenting right.  

And as you sit there praying that you make it through the service without issue, your imagination is running wild with every potential negative outcome. 

All the sudden, out of the corner of your eye, you catch a glimpse of something beautiful. Something that makes you feel like you are part of a common struggle. Funny how struggles can feel so bad but common struggles can feel so good. 

What you see is one of the Pastor’s kids chasing a high score on Call of Dragons. The other has thoroughly covered the Sunday program with a lovely sketch of a ballet dancer. 

Their heads are somewhere else as well. 

Is the Pastor setting the right example? Doing all he can to raise these kids to understand the importance of church?  

At some point, I’m sure he was tempted to yell, “Hey, get your head in the game.” 

To which they might have responded, “Seriously, old man.” 

Charlie Munger said, “The secret to happiness is to lower your expectations.” That process of lowering expectation is about comparison as well. If you have high expectations, and you compare every experience to those expectations, you’ll inevitably be unhappy with your results.

Why do that to yourself? 

Comparison is a part of us, a habit that is hard to shake, so I’d suggest doing some mental judo on it. Instead of trying to stop cold turkey, let’s see if we can use the power of comparison in a new way. 

Ask yourself, compared to what? 

The Pastor’s daughters, the kids who had heard it all before, they may have been thinking that just being there to support their father was enough for the day. Maybe he thought so too. No need to compare them to a theologian.

I can do the same thing at the ballpark. When I see my kid doing Ninjago moves as he rounds the bases, and I notice the other parents watching him with absolute joy, I can see that he is bringing something different to the team. Maybe I was comparing him to the wrong thing as well.

While I recalibrate my comparison, I hope the other parents aren’t crazy enough to look at us and think, they have it all figured out.

But you never know, comparisons are tricky that way.