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" While my son, Henry, can be awfully good company for a kid on the cusp of 8, by the time we&amp;#039;ve reached the tail end of summer \u2014 those sluggish days after camp has ended but the heat and humidity have decided to stick around for a few more weeks \u2014 I am more than ready for him to return to school. Because when he&amp;#039;s at school, he&amp;#039;s not here, begging to play a fifth hour of video games because he&amp;#039;s too bored to do anything else and it&amp;#039;s too hot to go outside. Bring on the regimented learning! Then the school year starts, and it all comes back to me: the social pressure, the feelings of inadequacy, the urge to excel. Not for him \u2014 for me. Here is what will occur on the first day of school: An impeccably dressed, perfectly coiffed mom will sidle up to me at the classroom drop-off. As we watch our children get settled in, she&amp;#039;ll detail her family&amp;#039;s summer-long, life-changing trip to the Brazilian rain forest. &amp;quot;So fun,&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;ll nod. As if I know exactly what a summer-long adventure like that would entail. Who hasn&amp;#039;t been to the Brazilian rain forest? &amp;quot;And what were you guys up to?&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;ll ask. &amp;quot;Oh, we had a quiet summer,&amp;quot; I will murmur, hoping she&amp;#039;ll believe that my husband, Scott, and I stayed on home turf only because we&amp;#039;d already traversed the globe during all those other summers. The other mom will gasp, &amp;quot;You mean to say you \u2014 you stayed here?&amp;quot; as all the parents and children turn to stare. At which point Henry will look up from his crayons and cry out, &amp;quot;Oh, mother, why must we be poor?&amp;quot; and Ms. Rain Forest will place a manicured hand on my shoulder as her eyes fill with tears. It&amp;#039;s not only the wealthy parents I compare us with. I&amp;#039;ll pit my mothering skills against the mom with five children who has long playdates at her place, where she bakes banana bread and composes a theme song for each kid on her acoustic guitar. Or the dad who skateboards to school with his kids, takes them rock climbing twice a week, and coaches soccer on weekends. Or the parent who works from home and attends every field trip and organizes the school fund-raisers. Meanwhile, I consider it a good day when I remember to tell Henry to wipe the waffle crumbs from his cheeks after breakfast. I have different priorities, I tell myself. I could do those things if I wanted to! You could say that when it comes to parenting \u2014 and most everything else \u2014 I&amp;#039;m cursed with both a competitive streak and terminal laziness. I deeply want to excel, but I&amp;#039;d rather not work at it. I&amp;#039;d prefer that my natural skills and charm catapult me to the top. That competitive mind-set kicked into high gear when I got pregnant. I compared myself with every pregnant woman I could find. I found it difficult, however, to figure out if I was ahead. How do you measure pregnancy success? Degree of rosy glow? Lowest number of stretch marks? To the extent that I could quantify my superiority, I found that instead of winning, I seemed to not even be placing. I spied a beaming pregnant woman in the bookstore, and she didn&amp;#039;t have any lunch-related stains on her shirt. While taking a waddling stroll, I spotted a woman with what appeared to be a third trimester belly, and she was jogging. Jogging! When it came to new motherhood, though, I knew I&amp;#039;d be the front-runner. I had read four \u2014 no, five! \u2014 parenting books, after all. At the very least, I&amp;#039;d get Most Well-Read. So I couldn&amp;#039;t wait to join a new-moms group a few weeks after Henry was born. Unfortunately, a disturbing percentage of the group consisted of superachieving moms whose kids slept through the night at six weeks and nursed like champs. Henry, however, apparently thought that nighttime was Shrieky Screamy Time, and that the most efficient method for obtaining breast milk was to root around in my armpit. On the other hand, my baby was cuter than any of theirs. I stayed with the moms group for at least a year \u2014 for the camaraderie, sure, but also to compare Henry&amp;#039;s developmental milestones with those of the other, less adorable kids. I&amp;#039;m sure I wasn&amp;#039;t the only one. &amp;quot;Sophie&amp;#039;s sitting up!&amp;quot; one mom would announce, as she looked upon all of our floppy, non-sitting-up babies with a hint of satisfaction. When it was my turn to show off Henry&amp;#039;s sitting-up talents, another mom would flaunt her child&amp;#039;s newfound crawling skills. Then the talking about talking began. &amp;quot;William said mama!&amp;quot; a mom would exult. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d rack my brain. Had Henry said mama? That time he said mumumum to the dog, did he mean mama? &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s obviously a thinker,&amp;quot; a mom said to me one day, as her 11-month-old son babbled, &amp;quot;Phone? Hello? Mama? Up?&amp;quot; \u2014 the chatty show-off \u2014 while 13-month-old Henry silently gazed up at a cloud. A few months later, Henry began speaking in full sentences, and we ran into that mom and her little boy again. From his stroller, he called out to Henry, &amp;quot;Raisin? Cup? Yes? Boy?&amp;quot; My son stared blankly at him. The mom smiled sadly at us as they went on their way, and as soon as they were out of hearing range, Henry said, &amp;quot;Mama, that boy had raisins in his cup.&amp;quot; It was almost like he didn&amp;#039;t care whether or not we made the other parents feel bad! The heady sprint of those first years is past us, and now that we&amp;#039;re deep into the grade-school stretch, Henry&amp;#039;s pulled far ahead. I wouldn&amp;#039;t say he&amp;#039;s the smartest kid in his class (mostly because the other parents might be reading this). Our children make up a beautiful rainbow, each with their own special qualities, or whatever. I surveyed the parents in my circle, who admitted that they, too, compare themselves with other parents and compare their kids with other kids. I think we all do it. And it&amp;#039;s not (only) to make sure we&amp;#039;re Number One. We do it because we&amp;#039;re looking for reassurance that we&amp;#039;re not alone in our struggles. You see, it&amp;#039;s comforting to know that while, say, our kid won&amp;#039;t eat more than five foods, another child in her class refuses to ingest anything but potato chips and the occasional grape. That all kids are nuts. And they&amp;#039;re all going to be okay. Still, sometimes we enjoy the thrill of the fight. Last week I asked one of Henry&amp;#039;s friends, at our home for a playdate, if he wanted a snack. &amp;quot;Do you have any satsumas?&amp;quot; he asked. I stared at him. &amp;quot;Is that...a Bionicle?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; he explained, looking at me with great compassion. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re oranges.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Of course they are,&amp;quot; I said. (They&amp;#039;re a variety of mandarin oranges. I had to Google them.) Crap, I thought, are other parents offering their children a rainbow of seasonal produce? Before I could scramble to the gourmet grocery, however, I took a deep breath. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re all out,&amp;quot; I smiled. &amp;quot;Tell your mom we&amp;#039;ll have them for the next time.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;My mom?&amp;quot; he asked, as if she hadn&amp;#039;t directed him in this charade. Then I offered him an apple. But not before pointing out that it was organic. Alice Bradley also shares her adventures in parenting at finslippy.com, momversation.com, and lets-panic.com. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son, dog, and cat. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/advice/a5895/perfect-moms/>