Luke has always been extremely competitive with Andrew. Whether it is beating him to the bathroom to brush his teeth, finishing his dinner first, running faster than him, etc, he usually calls the shots and Andrew follows like a good younger brother would. He has effectively convinced Andrew that "you like being second, right?" and Andrew replies "yeah". Or, "don't you want this bowl of blueberries?" (usually because it has fewer, but Andrew doesn't really notice). I try to tell them that everything is not a competition, and not to be bossy, etc. but competition between boys is really difficult to maintain (although now for certain things instead of fighting and competing with each other, they now say, "we beat Mommy and Daddy!! just because I think it is part of their (mainly Luke's) nature to compete with SOMEONE). The worst thing that he has had to endure so far is when people make comments about Andrew's curly hair and big eyes. He often wants Andrew to get his hair cut so that it is no longer curly. Yes, this is so sad, and I am always talking to him about how we are all different, and he should be happy for his brother when someone compliments him, and there are special things about him as well. He has recently gotten over this, and is sort of okay with having straight hair.
The other day was really rough on Luke when he realized that Andrew might actually be better than him at something. There was no way around it. No way to disguise it and make his way sound better. It was a good lesson, but VERY difficult.
While at the cabin a few weeks ago, Andrew began writing his name on everyone's shirts, and I never even taught him to write letters! He has a dry-erase book where he enjoys tracing all the letters, and he does like to do this, but it is usually a different story when they try to write their letters without the dotted lines. I think he mainly new how to write his name because of his letter obsession. He was a real quick learner too - I would show him where he was messing up, and how to do the E or W correctly, and he would fix it the next time.
Anyway, when we got home, both of the boys were sitting at the table, and I was trying to work with Luke on writing the letter K because he has a really tough time with all the angle-line letters (x, k, y, z, v). He always wants to curve it a little bit. He looked over and saw Andrew writing his name, and I exclaimed "great job, Andrew! And look at that W!" LUKE TOTALLY LOST IT! He began sobbing, saying "ANDREW knows how to write his letters better than me!, and I can't even write a W!" He went on and on, and just couldn't stop crying. I held him and comforted him, but at the same time, I explained that there are gonna be things in life that Andrew will be better than him. This was a very disturbing concept to Luke as he wants to be the best at everything. I told him Andrew loves letters and this is part of why he is good at writing them. I explained a lot of things to Luke that day.
When you love something, and practice it a lot you CAN get better, but don't ever expect to be the BEST, because there is always gonna be someone better. God has blessed all of us with different gifts and abilities for different reasons. If we were all good at the same things, then life would be pretty boring. We need doctors, teachers, mechanics, garbage men, etc for life to run smoothly. I explained the differences between John and Tom and the musical abilities that John was gifted with even though he was the younger brother (I think Luke assumes when you are older than someone, you are also BETTER than them at things). I explained how Ange and I were good at different things growing up. Daddy and I are good at different things NOW.
I think this was a really good conversation, and he seemed to feel much better in the end. This is not to say that we won't have many more of these kinds of issues pop up. Being our first child, we are always praising him for the things he does well, so this is probably a factor in him thinking he is great at everything. Does this mean we should stop praising him for other things? I don't think so. Encouraging our children and praising them is still very important. Max used to always have a "fear of failure" syndrome to the point that he wouldn't even try something because he was afraid to give it his all and then still fail. (He still sometimes struggles with this). I'm concerned that Luke may end up with this same syndrome. I believe this is just the beginning of many lessons to be learned.
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