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When I was younger my dad would always compare me and my younger sister to other kids in the neighborhood. There was this elderly couple that used to live next door who had their daughter come up to visit and bring two of her kids to visit the grandparents. My dad would invite the older boy over (he was a year older than me) and would play some sport with him. I guess this was time to compare models; this kid that my dad barely knew vs me. This kid had more mentally and financially stable parents than me so of course he got off to a running start. In my dad's view I should have been team captain at 12 or something. In high school I was picked on by some upperclassmen and I told my parents about it. I guess it was partially my fault since I had no friends in high school (went to school with a bunch of pricks) and Dad said they would clean my clock if I didn't make any friends. Another time, I worked at Hardees during my sophmore summer in HS and the coworkers there were a little clique of their own and gave me **** and I eventually got 'laid off' by the walrus of a manager after only a week. They drove by me in their car a couple of times and yelled crap at me as I walked home from school, and I told my Dad about Hardees and what happened there. He gave me crap for that and actually told me that I needed to hang out with people like that since 'I needed them more than I thought'.
The real kicker that makes me mad was when I attended Augustana College over a decade ago and it was a nightmare. Talk about an overpriced daycare; the students and staff there were a bunch of self-absorbed ****ers who probably couldn't butter a slice of toast if their life depended on it. But to my parents Augie was some prestigeous country club that lead to the 'good life'. They never spent time in that place and experienced it as a right-wing funny farm that it is. I never really got along with anyone there (I actually believe in freedom for people) and eventually dropped out due to grades and money; I had to work full time at a ****ty McDonalds job while going to school there just to afford their overpriced tuition. My parents acted like I just ran over their parents when I told them I transferred to the local vo-tech which was actually a better school by a long shot. Even today my Dad asks if I would reconsider Augie as in his mind 'Augie's the best college networking you'll get'. Yeah, if I plan on staying in this Third-World redneck banana republic state.
They also do this crap to my sister now and give her crap over every single little thing. I just wanted to rant about this since I got grilled by my parents a week ago for going back to school at the vo-tech again instead of some four year school. Sometimes I wonder if I should just walk away from my parents.
How old are you now? Have you talked to your parents about your feelings? My parents didnt do this but my grandmother did. She was a constant force in our lives as my mother couldnt cut the umbilical cord. My aunt and uncle seemed to break away because they realized my grandmother was the ultimate self esteem crusher. Since my aunt and uncle kept their mother at a distance, they also kept their kids at a distance as well. I grew up listening to my grandmother praise my cousins. We only saw them once a year at the annual christmas party. They rarely visited my grandmother when they got older meanwhile my siblings and I did a lot for her. When she became terminally ill I made medical decisions on her behalf so she wouldn't suffer. After her death, I found out she left a good chunk of money to my cousins, nothing was left for me or my siblings. That was hurtful but Ive never been a money grubber so I let it go. My cousins heard about the money coming to them right before my grandmother's death. They made sure they all showed up to the funeral. I will never forget standing over my grandmother's casket when my one cousin came over and started asking me about the estate. Nice choice grandma.
My mother did this to me growing up. All I ever heard from her was "why can't you be more like ________'s daughter. She's in student council/church choir/etc. Her mother is so proud of her".
I was the one kids' parents compare to. Like...so, I am sorry?
I wouldn't expect the compared to kid to be sorry. I think the parent who does the comparing should be sorry. My mother basically told she didn't like who I was and couldn't be proud of me because I wasn't like A & B. I don't hold it against the "better" kid at all.
It's not just an Asian thing. My mother did that, too. Her friend's daughter was so popular, so outgoing, so everything I wasn't. Why couldn't I be more like her? Uh, mom, she's also beautiful--have you looked at your own four-eyed, metal-mouthed, pizza-faced daughter with the fuzzy, uncontrollable hair lately? It's a lot easier to be outgoing when you have peaches-and-cream skin, big blue eyes, and long blonde hair and you're not afraid to go to school every day because you don't know when someone is going to start calling you names because of what you look like.
Anyway, she shut up when beauty queen hooked up with some smelly hippie, got pregnant, quit school, drove cross country doing acid all the way and gave birth to a hugely deformed stillborn baby in California.
It wasn't just me. My mother said things like this to all my siblings, too. It was as if you could never be good enough. Now, of course, we know it was my mother's problem, not ours. And I think my mother knows it, too. She has come to regret the way she treated us as kids.
Some of it was cultural, though. There is a term, "Dutch Praise", that means an insult. It was a way of thinking with the older Dutch-American people, tied to their hell, fear, and death church, that giving praise to a child would cause them to become prideful, and so you had to constantly knock them down to keep them from thinking too highly of themselves. A weird way of thinking, and very harmful. I think my siblings and I all consciously tried not to do that with out own children and end that crap with our generation.
It's not just an Asian thing. My mother did that, too. Her friend's daughter was so popular, so outgoing, so everything I wasn't. Why couldn't I be more like her? Uh, mom, she's also beautiful--have you looked at your own four-eyed, metal-mouthed, pizza-faced daughter with the fuzzy, uncontrollable hair lately? It's a lot easier to be outgoing when you have peaches-and-cream skin, big blue eyes, and long blonde hair and you're not afraid to go to school every day because you don't know when someone is going to start calling you names because of what you look like.
Anyway, she shut up when beauty queen hooked up with some smelly hippie, got pregnant, quit school, drove cross country doing acid all the way and gave birth to a hugely deformed stillborn baby in California.
It wasn't just me. My mother said things like this to all my siblings, too. It was as if you could never be good enough. Now, of course, we know it was my mother's problem, not ours. And I think my mother knows it, too. She has come to regret the way she treated us as kids.
Some of it was cultural, though. There is a term, "Dutch Praise", that means an insult. It was a way of thinking with the older Dutch-American people, tied to their hell, fear, and death church, that giving praise to a child would cause them to become prideful, and so you had to constantly knock them down to keep them from thinking too highly of themselves. A weird way of thinking, and very harmful. I think my siblings and I all consciously tried not to do that with out own children and end that crap with our generation.
Tell me about it. My parents both came from families that had ass backwards ways of doing things. I don't even want to deal with extended family because they're so dingy and out of touch with the world. It's funny that you mentioned the one popular gal that ended up as some junkie in California. Shortly after I got my 8th grade yearbook, my dad sat down and looked at it with me. He lectured me on what girls I should be dating based on the pictures in that yearbook (which I still have). One of the gals in there was just like the dazzly blond you mentioned before. She attended school for maybe 2 months of her 8th grade year and then dissappeared. When i was working at Mcdonalds in college years later, she started working there as well. Turns out she dropped out of 8th grade after getting pregnant with something and she looked like a Oompa Loompa...and I was the one who actually looked better than my classmates after high school, hahahaha.
When I was very young, my best friend and I were the same age. We attended the same school/class. I was the smartest kid in class and he was at the bottom of the class. His parents were mean and always compare him to me.
I was never mean to him or made fun of him. He had to repeat a grade and we ended up in different grades. So, we kind of drifted apart. I then moved out of the area. Never seen him again.
It was mean for parents to compare their kids to me when I was kid, because they can never measure up.
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Nice choice grandma. 
Never seen him again. 
