Is It Fine To Compare Your Child With Others?

Following is a case study of a child “Mohit” who is bound to be in a situation where his parents do distinguish him with his sibling. Let’s read out what happens to him…

Mohit is a 15-year-old boy. He lives with his elder brother and parents. Mohit’s brother is an excellent student and always comes 1st in his class and is good in sports as well. While Mohit struggles in his academics but he is really good at arts. The parents use to compare Mohit with his elder brother constantly. And, this constant demotivation by his parents and comparison with his elder brother have made Mohit a lot distant from his family. He doesn’t like his parents and brother at all and has a feeling of hostility towards them. He feels unloved and neglected most of the times. Since his skill of arts was never appreciated by his parents, he has stopped doing it as well. He always stays alone and aloof from everyone in his family and has recently began to show some behavioral issues. His family has now decided to take him to a psychologist.

Mohit shared all these concerns with the psychologist and the psychologist suggested the following measures to the parents to improve their relationship with Mohit.

Never compare among your children.
Always appreciate the talents and positive qualities in your child.
Understand not every child can have the same potential and its okay if they are not as good enough the other child.
Always support your child and their preferences.
Make the children believe that you love them equally and there in no favorite kid in the house.
In case there’s a need to provide a feedback for the misbehaves of the child, give it constructively. That means, give the feedback in a positive way.

With this conclusion, Mohit’s parents realizes that somehow, they are responsible for this situation, and they decided to follow the points the psychologist communicated. With their constant efforts, after six months, Mohit got his smile back and he started coming closer to his family. He started loving his family back, and all went well.

It is important that parents understand this because it’s a very sensitive, yet common problem seen in many households. Comparison by parents can highly affect a child’s mental health and his life. Parents need to make some small alterations in their own behaviors and parenting, and it can make a huge impact in the child’s life and improve their relationship with their own child.