I recently had a conversation with my sister-in-law about my niece and one of her classmates at her preschool. It appears that there’s a little girl who likes to point out to my niece that her hair is longer than my nieces (btw - my niece has some of the most beautiful - and long - hair I have ever seen on a little girl). Apparently this taunting has caused my niece to speak of the situation with her mom on more than one occasion after coming home from school.
My sister had gently tried to explain to her 4-year old daughter that her hair was in fact long, but because of the braids she wore in her hair it was not as easy to see how long it was.
It seems that when Pajama Day came at school my niece was able to settle the score in some way. Apparently the little girl with the long hair didn’t have nice new pajamas like my niece wore. She came home excited about this fact – she had now found a spot where she could one-up “little Ms. Long hair.” She may have had the longer hair, but my niece had the newer (translation “better”) pajamas.
Of course, this was a story we shared about two little 4-year olds that was really nothing more than an anecdote, just a funny story – but it did get me to thinking.
The first point was how early in life we start comparing ourselves to others and competing. Imagine little kids needing to find ways to point out why “I’m better than you.” The other point I thought about was how much this still goes on even with adults. Think about how many people buy cars, clothes, homes, and degrees not for the satisfaction they bring, but to prove that they are better than the next. It has become a never ending cycle of craziness that causes people to constantly seek the next newest thing in order to feel worthy.
It’s almost something we can understand in children and shrug it off as just ‘kids being kids’. They, after all, haven’t yet learned about the value in their uniqueness. They haven’t learned that they don’t need to compete or compare themselves with the people around them in order to feel valuable in this world. They don’t know that it is not those exterior things that makes them valuable, but rather who you are on the inside.
I wonder do we, the adults, really recognize how childish it is to constantly compare ourselves to others, silently judging ourselves better or worse than the next and then acting accordingly. I think it represents a person’s insecurity when they need to reduce another person in their own mind in order to make themselves feel better. These are the same people you see ‘sucking up’ to those people who they feel are on a higher level they perceive themselves to and acting ‘stuck up’ to those they put beneath them.
What would life be like if we could let go of that 4-year old inside of us that always needs to put people above or beneath us?
I am confident that my niece, her little friend at school, and all the other 4-year olds will one day grow out of this phase of life. I just hope that all of us adults who surround them have the wherewithal to do the same.
