Hi,

Today is International Children's Day.

Upon hearing this, most people surely think "Every day is already all about them, the demanding little £$%s!".

But I only assume that because that's what I thought when I first heard of this annual celebration, and we all assume other people think like we do.

Anyway, this annual fun fest reminded me of a framework I try to keep in mind.

How to look at children’s pictures

When small children make their first steps or finally draw a recognisable zebra, we always give them a "Wow!" even though it's objectively pretty rubbish.

And we're often being genuine in that awe.

If you have a child, and even if you don't, I don't think it will be surprising for me to say that you would never think to compare your child with Picasso.

Let's say Little Jimmy comes home from school. He's 6.

You're one of those progressive/lazy parents who tries to let their kid walk home from school. You live in a small town, so you assume that their chances of being kidnapped are lower than in that horrible London or that terrible New York.

No, your child comes home safely with something they did in art class that day.

It looks like a cat with coloured nails scratched a piece of paper.

You look at this monstrous stain. What's the first thing you say?

You are a good parent or guardian. You have reinforced their sense that it's worth trying to do things. Good for you.

But you do actually know what they've made is pretty bad. Honestly, you do.

You've been to the Tate Modern. Even that Jackson Pollock's scattered lines made more sense that this bilge presented to you by your spawn. Even Mark Rothko. That was just big blobs of nothingness. But they ate into your soul and made you shudder.

But your compliments to Little Jimmy weren't sarcastic insults. They weren’t even lies. You were genuinely impressed by what they'd done.

You were impressed because you remember when Little Jimmy just ate the crayons instead of actually using them as crayons.

Compared to that younger Jimmy who put the purple crayon up his nose and soon started sneezing out the strangest bogeys, this cat scratch on paper is a masterpiece.

It's the strangest thing. And it comes to them doing anything.

You watch a tiny child walk across a carpet like they’ve been shot and dunked in lead, and it's actually impressive to you.

Impressive because you remember how much worse they were before.

This is a crucial difference when assessing anything.

How you treat kids is how you should treat yourself

The reason we are genuinely complimenting children’s achievements is because we are comparing them to their past selves, not to others.

We don't compare their first steps to Usain Bolt.

We don't compare their scratchy doodles to Michaelangelo.

Objectively, what they're doing may be unimpressive, but that's irrelevant.

It's actually all about their personal progress and that's why we applaud them and are sincerely impressed.

Acknowledge the personal progress, forget about comparisons to others

This framework is an attitude we should all harness when looking at ourselves.

I'll bet that if you ever tried to run a 100-metre sprint at your local sports ground, you immediately wondered what the world record was and how you compared.

Why bother with that inevitable self-belittling? Just keep a record of your time and then check how you do next time around. You may be pleasantly surprised.

You may be thinking, "But I should be doing everything perfectly. I'm an adult."

But what does that even mean? Do you really think you should be creating a new Guinness world record every time you do anything?

Stop that.

Just remember how you were doing before. Compare and contrast.

General takeaway: Don't be such a twat to yourself, okay?

Podcast of the week

Keeping with the Children's Day theme, I recommend listening to this fascinating economic look at nurseries / kindergartens from Planet Money: Baby’s First Market Failure.

It's a US-centric view, a country that commonly has brutally low levels of parental leave, but many of the problems there can be found elsewhere when it comes to high costs and long waitlists, especially the UK.

That’s all this week. Thanks again for reading.

And yes, it was another children-related newsletter. Maybe I should just rename this newsletter “procrastiparenting”? 😑 

Adam

Adam Zulawski
Procrastilearning.com / More stuff

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