Parental Mentionitis

You know when you were, say, thirteen - and totally in love with some boy at school / the skating rink / the Blue Light Disco, and you'd never come straight out and say that you fancied that said person, instead you'd get a case of "mentionitis"? Where you'd find an opportunity to name drop them into everyday ordinary conversation at any given opportunity... Your mum would ask you if you wanted peas with dinner and you'd yearnfully sigh "Jake Coleman likes peas..." or you'd be discussing how a particular sad boy in your grade always accidentally farted in maths class, and you'd cheerfully pipe up "You know who DOESN'T fart... TOM doesn't fart"...

Whilst gone are the days of mentionitis (to some extent - however I do notice it a trend in adulthood when people having affairs - but that's a different topic altogether!) of people we adore on a romantic level, I do notice a growing trend of what I coin "parental mentionitis".

Once we have our children, they of course become our world. We live and breath through them and of course - every parent's own child (or children) is/are the apple of their eye. Through social platforms like Facebook, or at playgroups, during telephone conversations with friends, we like to share our children's development, milestones, achievements and acts of hilarity and humility... Yet a pattern I've noticed we can get into as parents is "matching" one parent's declaration of their child's achievements with one of our own. So often someone will say something about their child, and instantly we fling back at them something equal (or sometimes, "better") about our own child(ren).

This is where I consider it to be a form of involuntary parental mentionitis. We don't do it in an endeavour to shadow over our friends' or acquaintances' children... it just becomes a force of habit that when Sarah tells us how "little Billy has started eating 3 whole weetbix for breakfast", we automatically - rather than acknowledging Sarah's pride for her child - go off onto our own unintentional bragging about how our own child can eat 6 in one sitting (and in many cases, then continue to go on about our own child 'til the proverbial cows come home!)

Whilst it's one thing to share our experiences and gain advice and knowledge from our mother-peers, it's another to haphazardly overbear another parent with our interest in our own child and come across as ignoring the main thing they were trying to share with us in the first place... I think pondering over this notion has made me realise how I think I need to start being a bit more receptive to what my friends are sharing with me, and better acknowledge what they have chosen to say. That's something I'm going to aim to improve upon anyhow - and rather wait for a moment to ping-pong an anecdote about my own child back at them, really take the time to share their moment of pride and leave it be... Just some food for thought ;)