Parenting is tough.

I mean it is unreasonably difficult. I need someone to give me a formula to make this easier.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to turn my feral monsters into well rounded individuals. In case you’re wondering, this isn’t going particularly well.

Have you ever run straight into a brick wall or even better a sliding glass door. I mean at full speed without realizing you’re headed for a barrier? Ok I haven’t done this, but I’d imagine it’s a tad bit shocking. That is what it’s like trying to get my kids to do something they don’t want to. It is like you have decided to run over and over into a solid wall. You’re not going to win, you can continue fighting the wall, but at some point one of you is going to give and it isn’t going to be the wall. I argued with my middle child for an hour about the importance of eating breakfast before going to a waterpark today. I made him two different things, guess which one of us won that battle? Him… Well is it really a win when you get the waterpark and you’re starving? Probably not, maybe I actually won.

Anyway, let’s circle back to the real reason for this post. How do you turn feral monsters into well rounded adults that PUSH themselves to do better? Basically how do you teach someone that “good enough” doesn’t have to be good enough?

I’m not the slightest bit competitive when it comes to sports and games. I figure there is always a winner and a loser and since I don’t care, I might as well lose. But there are some things I do not like to lose. I like to be the best academically and at work. This does not come easily for me. I am not particularly personable, I don’t grasp difficult concepts quickly, and I am terrible at hiding how nervous I am. I’ve made up for many of these shortcomings by working harder and longer, by preparing more, and by looking at all the possible ways to screw up and planning ahead. This might not be the healthiest coping mechanism, but I’ll worry about that when I have more time on my hands. I like to do better than I did each time, if I have to compete with someone, I might as well compete with yesterday’s me.

I do realize that I am a perfectionist and that isn’t always helping… don’t worry, I’m working on being better.

How do you teach someone this? How do you teach someone to give their all when giving 50% gets them ahead of their peers? This is something I want to instill in my kids. This is the piece of the immigrant mentality I want them to carry into adulthood. But here’s the thing, I’m not entirely sure you can teach this without saying things like “we didn’t leave the camps for this”.

My oldest is a bright kid. His 50% gets him ahead of the rest of his class. He hears things once and gets them right away. He didn’t get this from me. But this encourages him to be ok with mediocrity, how do you push a kid to do better when they really don’t have to? How do you encourage a child to compete with themselves and not with the other people around them?

No seriously, I want to know how you do this?

My middle child came knowing how to compete with himself. He couldn’t care less what someone else is doing as long as he is doing better than he did the last time. He can’t see the point of team sports, but put him in an individual activity and he excels.

I didn’t teach him any of this, he just came into the world this way (no trust me, I’ve tried to teach him many things unsuccessfully).

My daughter is one of those people that sees the value of excellence. She’s a bit calculating. She goes into every situation and determines how she can use it to her advantage. Ok let’s be honest, it’s a little bit scary how good she is at manipulating…everyone. I don’t think I taught her this either. I think she’s just savvy.

I try hard to foster a healthy sense of competition in our family. My goal is to get people to compete with their previous selves, but as you might know siblings love to compete with each other (we don’t encourage that). I encourage them to read harder books, dive deeper into topics, build more complicated lego projects, clean up after themselves (this one is a major fail), and solve their own problems. Let’s just say I haven’t been successful with… well any of it. My boys still want to read Dog Man when they can read something with more substance. My middle child is still convinced he can’t open his own bag of goldfish crackers. And I get told over and over “Mom I know more than the other kids about that.”

I can only stare at them blankly wondering why they don’t want to be the BEST at what they do.

How do you get kids to push themselves? How do you get them to see that good enough is fine, but trying harder has the potential to be more rewarding in the long run?

Basically I need a crystal ball so I can see where these children are when they’re in their 30’s. Will they be in prison or will they be entirely self sufficient contributing members of society? know those seem like extreme ends of the spectrum, but if you’ve met my kids then you know it’s going to be one or the other, there is no middle ground in this family. I just need a quick glimpse into the future and then I think I’ll be set.