Benjamin and Lauren Turner
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It's Not A Competition!

6/14/2012

 
Ever hear of sibling rivalry?

Yeah, I've heard about it too.  Apparently, it's expected that in any family of more than one child there's always an underlying level of competition where the kids are each vying for attention and putting the others down to manage it.  Siblings pick on each other, the common lore goes.  The more siblings, the more intense the bullying and the struggle for command.  Movies like "Cheaper by the Dozen" (the new version) really promote this concept, and a common breakthrough in a "family" show is when the kids learn their brother/sister is really quite dear to them and not all that annoying after all.

The kids in my family are far from perfect and have definitely been unkind to each other.  But this sense of competition with each other has been absent.  I suppose I always took this for granted until recently, when someone from a family similar in size to mine told me some stories about her relationship to her family during her growing-up years and shortly into marriage.  For her, everything was - and is - a competition to see who's better.  Who's smarter, who's more talented, who gets the better boyfriend, who does better in school, who has prettier children, and so on.  They love each other; but boy, do they compete against each other.

I listened to these stories and started thinking about my siblings, who would downplay their strengths to keep another sibling from being embarrassed or who would coach a sibling on their schoolwork rather than crow over them about getting better grades.  Then I looked at Ben's family and realized one of the things that was always familiar and comfortable to me about them was the relationship of the siblings and the way they take care of each other and don't put each other down.  Jenny used to clean Ben's room for him while he was at school just so he could be delighted when he got home, for instance.  I recognized that trait and loved it.  That's what I want our kids to be like.

The thing is, competitive rivalry - probably better just named "Boastful Pride"! - is actually natural.  It's our earliest inclination, the kind of trait that lends credence to the whole idea of "survival of the fittest".  The mentality of holding each other up, protecting each other and being selfless is actually the unnatural one, the philosophy that goes against our basic natures.  

If loving humility exists among siblings, it means something was deliberately done to cause it to happen.

If something was deliberately done, then that's what we want to do to our children!

I mentioned this to Ben.  "At some point, the parents of the other family must've thought the competition was good," he said.  "They must've seen it as normal, as making their kids stronger, at just indicating healthy preparation for living out in the world.  Otherwise, who would tolerate it?"

Perhaps the first thing - as always - is simply recognizing how ugly this rivalry is.  Pride and boastfulness have to be intolerable.  Not cute, not normal, not healthy.  Intolerable.

Perhaps it's also easy to do our kids an injustice by making them think when they're little that they're the most beautiful, talented, amazing people ever to grace the face of this planet.  If they make the mistake of thinking they are, they'll start getting jealous of people not recognizing how great they are.  A person's life is about who they are in comparison to what is perfect, not who they are in comparison with anyone else around them.  I think it may be when kids start thinking of themselves as pretty wonderful and comparing themselves with their siblings that they start finding out their brothers and sisters can *gasp* outdo them in places and that's where the rivalry comes in.  It becomes a fight for each to ensure their status as top-wonderful-person-of-the-family.

So to help our children love each other better and not get blinded by selfish rivalry, I think we're going to be pretty matter-of-fact about their strengths and weaknesses and be on the sharp lookout for the development of "Aren't I pretty great?"-ism.  We already love our current little peanut very much, but for his or her sake we're going to have to prevent him/her from getting a big head.  Love them truthfully for who they are and point them toward becoming more like God, not toward outdoing anyone around them.  

Because it would be so easy to let that pride take hold and the rivalry creep in, and I was deeply saddened by what those things had done in the life of the person I spoke to recently.  It has created resentment and jealousy and bitterness and grief through the years and it's bound to create more in the years to come.  It's a painful, ugly, cancerous thing - nothing healthy and normal about it at all.  

As Ben puts it, "It's a bad weed we have to keep out of our garden."
Elizabeth
6/15/2012 10:38:59 am

I think part of the reason we don't have 'sibling rivalry' is because our parents don't have rivalry with each other. I agree that a huge part is because they never thought it was cute if I thought I could do something better than you or vice versa but I think a lot of it is also growing up with the fact that you help the people around you, not crow over them. I mean, how many times have you seen a wife talk about how much better at something she is than her husband, or the husband scoff at his wife not being able to do something?

Anyway....:D

Love,

Me

Leah
6/19/2012 02:06:44 am

I think that another really damaging thing that may go along with this is favoritism. If one or both parents are constantly holding up one child to another, or even just holding the child up, constantly telling everyone how they're the best one, it not only causes the other children to become jealous or unhappy, it causes the child you're holding up to feel like you said; that they're perfect and anyone who doesn't recognize that just doesn't understand. And they can stop looking for ways to make themselves better because they've already become a great person.

It also causes the children who are put down to see themselves as 'not as good' which really is saying that God did not make them as good as someone else.

I've been realizing that if a person thinks they are not as good as someone else, it's 1. insuring that they will not be what they should be because they think it's unachievable, 2. They are saying that God is not as good as he is because he didn't make all people just as good, and that really is blaspheming God if you think about it because it is saying that he did not create good things.

Also, I think that saying "Boastful Pride! - is actually natural" Is not completely accurate. Because God created us to be Good first and foremost, and our first instinct is actually goodness I think. Things like pride and boasting are things that are natural to the world, and may have been natural before Jesus gave us his spirit, but since we have been given his spirit, and his spirit is stronger than any evil, I think that our first instinct is Godliness, and we might allow Boastful Pride, and many other things to be part of our lives, but it is not Natural.

(this must be a record length comment for me :)

-Leah (and Benjamin)



Lauren
6/23/2012 02:16:19 am

I have Internet!!!! Hooray!

Anyhow.

Elizabeth, I think you're right that the lack of rivalry between parents models a lack of rivalry between siblings; though I think the lack of that rivalry alone is probably not enough to teach brothers and sisters not to crow over their brother or sister. I think the parents also have to detest that kind of behavior.

Leah, congratulations on the record comment! I'll take any more records you want to beat :-)).

I agree about the favoritism being really damaging for brothers and sisters; but I do uphold my comment about boastful pride being a child's natural bent. Here's my thought process on that:

When children are born, they do have a portion of God's Spirit in that they are made in his likeness; but what child do you know that, left on their own from birth, would gravitate towards humility rather than pride? I mean, which one of the babies in our family wouldn't have turned into a spoiled brat without careful correction? (Maybe we just had rotten kids in our family...;-))

While I believe we have a deep instinct toward what is good, the first instinct of our natures seems to be Self: holding Self up, doing what feels best for Self. That is why "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child" and that rod of correction is needed if you're going to drive it out of them. If you take a small baby and immediately start correcting them from focusing on Self to focusing on what is Good instead, they very easily go toward what is good because it is what they were created to do: but it's what they do UNcorrected that betrays their natural bent. Jesus' Spirit is not part of us from birth, as far as I can tell. That's why even small babies show selfishness and temper and so easily "go bad" (terrible twos, for instance).

I think the reason we spend all the effort and energy on the training and care of our children is precisely so they WILL have Jesus' Spirit as part of them rather than going their own way.

Jesus' Spirit comes by belief, and that's not something we seem born with. It's something we acquire sometime in our life, whether through our parents' example and teaching or whether through a gradual understanding of truth (humbling of self) or being blinded on a road to Damascus (or something equally dramatic). As I understand it, we have two things at war within us from conception: our Flesh and God's Nature. Flesh starts off winning by default: when we're given an infant, we have to consciously feed God's Nature and starve the Flesh nature if we want that baby to grow as a man or woman of God.

And therein came my conclusion to beware of arrogance and always be on the lookout to starve it even in our beautiful and innocent children. :-)


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    Author: Lauren

    Wife of Benjamin and mother to two wonderful little girls who are getting bigger every day.  Enjoys writing down thoughts and discussions we are having within the family and sharing them with whoever is interested in reading.

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