VER-XIV-0057
“I stopped competing with my own kids and started building them up.”
It's an ugly thing to admit, but some parents build under their children — needing to stay the smarter, stronger, more-accomplished one. You caught it and turned it. Now you're cheering their wins instead of quietly measuring against them. That's the purest build-with there is: wanting them to surpass you, and meaning it.
Your Practice
- Catch the impulse to one-up or correct, and replace it with a question about their thing.
- Celebrate a win of theirs today without attaching your own story to it.
- Tell them plainly you want them to go further than you did. Kids need to hear it.
- Measure your success as a parent by how far past you they get.
The Architects
“A man when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5 (trans. George Long)