Staying Ahead of the Zhangs
With our son starting 1st grade at a top private school in Shanghai, I already feel my own competitive spirit stirring. In what is probably an unhealthy way.
Everyone wants the best for their kids, but there seems some innate urge to be at least up with the other kids & parents, and to be, or seem to be the best.
This especially means having the best toys, clothes, books, and so on. This makes me feel materialistically evil and it seems one has to take the position of going old-school low-road, middle-normal, or high-end show off. Given my son’s current book bag is full of holes, his pants too short, and his shoes falling apart, we’re starting low, but I have a feeling will move up all too rapidly.
I began to feel the self-driven pressure of this while attending school orientation and thinking about buying a swimming towel. What towel to buy, and how to make sure it’s as good as, or better, than anyone else’s. Even to make other kids, and/or their parents, envy ours. This is really evil, and I feel bad for feeling this way. But it comes so naturally; that’s not good.
Fortunately our school has uniforms, which generally removes a key area of child and parent competitiveness (and enforces some taste on the kids). Of course there are still ways to one-up others, in accessories and other things.
Of course there is still the drive to ensure you kid does well in school, is popular, and is better than other kids at some, most, even all things … my, that’s bad. I’m Hoping he can excel at least at dance, swimming, computing, skiing. And be the most helpful little gentleman in class.
Plus, being in China, everyone drills their kids in things like math and Chinese characters. This is now officially banned at kindergarten levels, to reduce competitiveness and stress on the kids, and everyone does it anyway. Kids should come into grade one knowing the alphabet, a few characters, and a bit of basic math. But all, including our son, can read hundreds of characters, do basic multiplication, etc. because we all want to keep up and get ahead.
I’m not sure how this will play out, but I hope the overall feeling of competitiveness tamps down over time. Here now a month or so into the school year, it seems not so bad, as we just try to get him up and to school each day, back home and an hour of homework, and to bed on time.