The Whole Parent Podcast

Navigating Jealousy and Envy with Kids #72

• Jon Fogel - WholeParent

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This episode is for the parent quietly watching from the sidelines, wondering if their child is falling behind socially—or if they’re the only one who seems worried about it. We step into those moments where your kid hangs back, plays alone, gravitates toward adults, or misses social cues, and we slow the whole story down. Instead of rushing to labels or fixes, this conversation reframes social “lag” as temperament, context, and skill development unfolding on its own timeline. We explore how easily our own childhood wounds sneak into our fears, how extroversion gets mistaken for health, and why opting out isn’t the same thing as being excluded. Most of all, this episode offers relief: a way to see your child more clearly, respond with curiosity instead of panic, and trust that many of the traits that worry us at six can become strengths later—if we don’t shame them out of existence first.

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Jon @WholeParent:

The wrapping paper is already in the trash, a half-built Lego set spread across the living room floor. Your kid is quiet in a way that isn't tired. Their eyes are fixed on nothing, shoulders slumped before they finally say it. How come they got all that stuff? You pause, holding a mug that's probably gone cold, realizing that this isn't really about toys. It's about something deeper. If you've ever watched envy or jealousy show up in your kid after a birthday party or during sibling moments, maybe around the holidays, or when attention shifts, and felt unsure of whether to correct it or soothe it or ignore it or shut it down, you're in the right place. Jealousy and envy are those emotions that parents are kind of terrified of getting wrong. We worry that it means entitlement or bitterness, or that we're raising kids who won't be grateful, or maybe something even worse. In this episode, we're breaking down what jealousy and envy actually are in a child's brain, why they show up, even in loving, stable families, and why many of the things that we say, with the best possible intentions, can accidentally make it worse. We'll talk about these things not as just behaviors to correct, but as signals and how to help your child feel secure, even when they don't get what someone else has. Let's get into it. Welcome back out to the porch to the whole parent podcast in this episode about jealousy and envy. This is one that I probably was going to think about releasing during the holidays, but then we did some other things instead, and a bunch of other stuff got recorded. And I really had it in the back of my mind, it's like this is this is a good thing to talk about. And the reason I thought of that, among other things, is because some of the questions that I have today are really old, but they are reminiscent. This first one from Rachel is reminiscent of a comment that I got dozens of times on one of my early holiday videos that went kind of viral. And the whole premise of the video was that you should get your kids less stuff for the holidays, like less physical items, that more stuff does not usually equal more happiness. And I made this video in a couple of different ways, but the first one that I made went, like I said, semi-viral. I don't know, like a million or something views, maybe two million views, I don't exactly remember. But uh really what was surprising was that it was picked up by the Minimalist podcast, which is a pretty big podcast about minimalism, and they shared it as a video that they were kind of reacting to, and then that picked up a whole different set of audience, and that was like another million views. So uh, not usually how my videos go. There was, it wasn't really a video about behavior or child psychology or anything like that. It was a video about why you don't need to get your kids so much stuff, and that they're usually happier when we don't get them as much stuff. But the reason I mentioned that video is because there were so many people in the comments who said, Okay, John, this is great, but what about the fact that their cousins get a million gifts? Or what do I do when we go to some, you know, over to a friend's house and they got the new video game system, or they got this, or they got that, and my kid didn't get anything. And I usually responded basically by being like, well, first and foremost, um, kids probably are going to be way better at coping with that than you are, and I do stand by that. When we're talking about envy and jealousy here, these are actually emotions often that kids get from us, and we'll talk about that. But uh, there is some truth also to just the reality that sometimes kids feel like it's unfair. Fairness is a huge concept for kids, and fairness in who gets what, especially within sibling relationships, but even outside of sibling relationships, can can be something that really drives some negative self-feelings and things like that. So I want to jump right into the questions because uh we definitely did this this year where we did fewer gifts and uh last year, so that's 2020 Christmas 24, we got all of our kids, three kids at the time. We didn't get well, I shouldn't say we didn't get anything for the baby, but like I she was like two months old, but she didn't care. Um but we got all of our three kids in 24 the same thing, and so there was no envy or jealousy that took place there, and I'll define the difference between those here in a minute. But uh there was no envy that took place because everybody had the same thing, so you can't be envious of something that somebody else has that you don't have. The only envy that came up was when somebody else's car was charged and theirs wasn't, uh, because they're like they they have batteries that are they're pretty good, but occasionally they run out. And even to this day, those cars are still around, they're still kicking, and they're they're loving them more well over a year now since they've had them and really enjoying them. This year we didn't do that. We got kids specific gifts based on their kind of likes and desires and what they were into, and it created some jealousy and envy, and just specifically uh over individual items where there was I don't remember exactly what it is now off the top of my head, but somebody got like a gigantic like squishy, it wasn't like a stuffed animal, it was like a real heavy thing, like a squishy frog. It was like filled with beans. We got it secondhand at savors or goodwill or something. And we just gave it to like my my five-year-old because we thought he would like it, but then I guess my nine-year-old really liked it and wanted it, and he did the whole well, let's trade, and I'll give you this, if you give me that. And the five-year-old thought that the trade was for like maybe the rest of the day, and the nine-year-old was like, no, this is a this is a no-trade back situation, and it caused some real struggles, and it wasn't like a shit, but it wasn't a sharing conflict, it was a uh you have something and I want it. I I don't just want it right now, I want it for good. And that can create in sibling relationships, you can navigate a lot of that by having kind of personal property rights rules and frameworks in your house where you know, hey, if something we're not gonna do it that way. But the truth is, in outside of sibling relationships, it still is a thing. And so I was reminded after Christmas that as much as I say, and again, I stand by this, that it's the parents most often who are struggling with the fact that they didn't get their kid as much as somebody else got their their own child, um kids can experience this. They can. And I give an example in my book, it's the in the uh emotions of your superpowers, it's the story that I used to intro that chapter about a time when I felt very deep envy for something that my next door neighbor got. So without further ado, let's go to Rachel, who sent this DM, uh, which was based on the that video, I think. I think it was a response to that video. She said, Hey, I don't know how to ask this without sounding weird, but here it is. My seven-year-old's best friend got everything for Christmas. PS5, huge Lego sets, new bike, truly insane stuff. And now my kid keeps bringing it up over and over. Why do don't we have that? Or how come they got so much? And I keep telling him, we need to be grateful for what we have, but it just isn't landing. Any tips? Man, that is a really tricky situation, I will say. Uh, and that is basically the situation that many people were defining. The first thing that we have to do is get our own mental model of ourselves in check and our own self-talk in check. And I I'm not saying that you necessarily, Rachel, are doing anything wrong here, but what what I'm often struck by is that kids don't have that experience of like, oh, that person's that that family has more money than us or richer than us, um, or this family has less money than us, or they're poor, until later, usually, like like middle school is when that starts to be more evident. Obviously, there there is going to be difference, but in many communities, and this isn't always the case, but in many communities, because your school isn't is set based on zip code, especially like a public school, your school is set by zip code. There's there is variance, but there is not infinite variance between the number of kids or the you the the income or the you know average house price or the average rent price of a bunch of kids who are in the same school, usually. Um again, this is a maybe this isn't a good uh assumption to be making, but uh with that being the case, you do you don't usually have that experience except where it pertains to gifts, because different families do gifts very differently. And so one of the things that I like to kind of point out for parents is that we often have a much harder time with our child not getting something that somebody else in their class got. Like this happens all the time with cell phones, is like, you know, a kid will come home and say, well, and this is usually again, an older kid will say, Well, everybody in my class has an iPhone and I want an iPhone. And it makes a P a parent feel inadequate to not then provide that if, quote, everybody else has it, even if it's just the perception that everybody else has it. And part of this comes from, and I don't want to go like get too much on my soapbox here, economic soapbox, but part of this comes from living in a capitalist system where we play we the things that we value, we usually place monetary value on, right? And so even even as even in relationships, right? When a person gets gets engaged, what do they do? They exchange a very expensive gift, and a gift that is way overinflated in price for what it actually is worth, right? It's a rock that comes out of the ground, that's what a diamond is. There are way more of them than you think there are. They're just the the diamond manufacturer or not manufacturers, the diamond companies uh hold those very carefully and they release them into the supply chain slowly so that this the price remains high, but there is no shortage of diamonds. Everybody could have a diamond on planet Earth if we wanted, probably. Um, or at least most people could have diamonds, but we they're hoarded and so that the value of them is driven up. And so when a couple is going to get engaged, generally the man goes out and buys this diamond, this rock, to present to the woman as a symbol of his fidelity and faithfulness and enduring love, right? Diamonds are forever, we've all heard it. Well, really, what that is, is it's an exchange of saying, You're valuable to me, so I'm gonna give you some money, like in the form of this gift. I'm gonna I am going to put some money up here, whether it's a couple hundred dollars, like the engagement ring that I got my wife was because we were in college and it was a couple hundred bucks. That's what it was. I got it from a pawn shop. I'm not gonna uh dodge that for a second. We've been buying secondhand stuff for ourselves forever. Now we buy it for our kids, and I'm not ashamed of it at all. Um, got it from a pawn shop, or you know, these celebrities who, I don't know, give each other million dollar rings or something, and usually it's you know, in a couple thousand dollars or something that people are spending, or at least a couple hundred dollars, like I said, on an engagement ring. And that is how we value what's going on. Like, like that's that is how we show value of somebody. And so our kid comes to us and they say, Well, my friend got this PS5 and this huge Lego set and this new bike and everything. And we feel like, oh, you feel like I don't love you as much, then your friends' parents love them because that's how we measure love and value in this country, is based on how much we give. And so the parents get kind of bent out of shape, and and we will start to do the kind of this different stages of defensiveness, whether it's kind of demonizing that parent. Well, why do you have to do all that and get all that stuff for your kid? Because now you just kind of make us all look bad, or um demonizing, you know, your own workplace, or oh man, you know, like as my job paid me more, I could actually do the things that would make my kids feel good about this, or I don't live in a good enough house for my kids, or I don't want this and that and the other. And it's really us saying we've bought into this myth or this lie that that money is about how much you love somebody, or that's how you measure it, is in how much you give them, like in dollars or in extravagant gifts, when that we know that that's not true. That's simply not true. And uh so I think we need to do our own work first and foremost. The second thing is because because I I'll say I'll say one more thing about that before I move on. The reason that we have to do our own work is because whatever we are fear feeling and experiencing, our kids are picking up on that, whether that's non-verbal, whether that's explicitly stated, whether that's a hushed conversation with our partner off to the side, but really they can pick up on it because they're seven. Like whatever we're saying or even feeling, if it's not processed and considered and deconstructed when necessary, in this case, it's a myth that we're kind of ascribing to. So deconstructed is the right way to handle it. If we don't do that work, our kid is going to get that message and they're going to do that comparison thing. We'll talk about comparison more later, but that like really that's we have to it starts with us. This is why chapter, what is it, three of my book is called modeling. It's what's mirrored, what's modeled is mirrored. In other words, if you want your child to not care so much about the things that they have and be grateful and all of that, you have to model that, not caring so much about what other people just being happy for their friend, right? Or whatever. Uh, and that so we have to do that work on the front end. That's important for parents to do. Okay. Now, how do we actually engage this with our child? I think we don't want to talk our kids out of the emotions that they're experiencing. That's easy to say when the emotions are ones that we don't moralize. But when we come from certain religious systems, I certainly have come from religious systems, I'm still a pastor, like we often see certain emotions, which are our internal reactions to external things that happen. We see those emotions, which we don't really have control over our emotions. We can regulate our emotions, we can control our behavior around our emotions, we can do certain exercises to help us process through emotions, but the emotions that we experience are not bad, they are just what happens in our body, right? It's like you saying it would be bad if you got thirsty when you didn't drink water all day, or you'd be bad when you got if you get being hungry is bad, right? And actually, we hear that out in in people who have uh eating disorders, they do come to associate hunger with being a a morality piece, right? It's it's I'm bad. There's something wrong with me because I'm hungry. Well, we do that a lot with certain emotions, and I don't often talk about not talking kids out of emotions, but when it comes to envy, we have to actually practice what we preach here because envy is one of those emotions that we've moralized. We've said, okay, well, if a kid is feeling envious, if they see something that they want that somebody else has, that is, you know, some there's something wrong with that. There's that's a sin in or whatever you want to call that within the religious framework that you're a part of. And because we've moralized that, now we're trying to get our kid to not feel that because we because the feeling of it is what we consider to be wrong, not just the actions on it, right? I can I can uh say it wouldn't be okay for your kid to go over to their friend's house and break their gigantic Lego set or you know, steal their bike or um be mad about the PS5, right? Like that would be an inappropriate behavior, not be mad about, but break the PS5, right? It would that was those would be inappropriate behaviors, but those would not be the emotional reactions, right? They might come from the emotions, but they're the behaviors that we can assess and say, oh, this is not the right thing, not the right way to handle the feeling of envy. But we because we've moralized envy and we've said, oh, okay, this is a bad thing to feel, we we actually talk kids out of, try to talk kids out of wanting, and it just confuses the heck out of them because they're it's it's a normal, natural feeling that they're experiencing. So I just want to take a moment here before I move on, because I keep saying envy and jealousy, and it sounds like I'm saying them interchangeably, but I'm not. This is one of my weird things. I'm sure that my wife listening to this is gonna be like, John, why are you talking about this? But uh what's been a really helpful tool for me is learning. I I think this is an Atlas of the Heart by Brandon Brown, that envy and jealousy are actually two different things. That envy is wanting something that somebody else has, and that that is it's a very that's what we usually think of when we say jealousy or envy. We that's what it means. We you somebody else has, and this is a perfect example that Rachel has just given us with her seven-year-old of he wants what somebody else has, but that's envy. Jealousy, on the other hand, is actually gonna be our next question, and that is wanting exclusivity with in in a relationship. Desiring exclusivity. So it's not that you know, envy might be I want a PS5 like my friend has a PS5. Jealousy doesn't come with things usually. Jealousy comes with people. I don't want I want that person to be my best friend and I don't want them to have other people who are their best friend. I don't want I that person called me their best friend and somebody else their best friend, and I didn't like that because that's jealousy. Like I demand or desire exclusivity. And so understanding that those things are different, now we can you'll understand why I'm using the terms in the way that I do. You don't have to use the terms that way, like you can call whatever you want jealousy in a view. I don't care. Words have only the meaning that we give them, but that's helpful to understand why I'm using the terms the way that I am. So, anyway, in this case, the in many cases, we don't moralize jealousy, actually. The experience of desiring exclusivity. We don't moralize that because many of us experience that in the context of monogamous relationships. If you're in a two-person monogamous relationship, usually, and it's not always the case, but often uh those both of those partners demand or desire exclusivity. They don't want other people involved in that relationship. And so jealousy is a very normal thing that we would say, oh, that's like an okay thing to want exclusivity, but it's not okay to want what somebody else has. Wanting something is not bad. Wanting is normal. Even if you come from, and this is another religious tradition thing, but like there are certain religions that have tried to desperately uh get people away from wanting things, like Buddhism, like the desire, desire is the root of all pain or whatever. Like, but wanting is a real thing. It comes from a evolutionary purpose of seeing something and going, oh, if I have that, my life will be better. We need to anchor our kids' nervous systems so that we can give their that feeling a productive outlet. The actions that might come from that feeling, the actions that can come from wanting when it's not effectively le you know felt, those can be antisocial or maladaptive. But the actual experience of just exp like somebody has something you want, that's that's okay. And so the first thing that we need to do is actually name that it is okay for our child to feel that way by saying something like, I understand and empathizing with it, I get why you feel that way. It's normal to feel that way, it makes sense to feel that way. Your brain is noticing something that you don't have, that they have, and it hurts. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you or with us. Different families do different things differently. We made different choices than them. So you've just said essentially, feel free to keep wanting. Not in like a you know, 80s parent, like, oh yeah, want it all, want, want as much as you want. It's not gonna change anything with me, right? Like, you could take that wanting all the way to Timbuktu, and I'm not, it's not gonna change my mind. I'm not getting you a PS5, so quit talking about it. Instead, we have to give them that place to actually feel that productive feeling out. And that is where we can actually do some real repair because I think ultimately what's what your child's communicating underneath here is I don't understand why this feels unfair. Like I or I maybe I understand why it feels unfair, but I don't understand why I was I'm in this family where things happen this way, and this other person's in this family, and that just doesn't seem right to me. And you can say, yeah, you know what, it's it that's normal to feel that way. It's normal to feel like you know everybody should have the same stuff, or that everybody should have the same access to the same stuff. That's a normal way that people feel. I think that that's not a horrible thing. It doesn't we can give those place a place to feel those emotions without making them into these kind of moralized character judgments.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, let me take a quick break and then I'm gonna go on to the second question, which was an email. Alright, our second question came in through email.

Jon @WholeParent:

It was from Paula. I love the name Paula because the lady who lived next door to my parents who took care of me while they were at work, she's her name was Paula, and so it's a special person in my life. Paula says, My six-year-old completely loses at any time I give attention to her little brother. Like I'm having helping him zip up his coat, and she suddenly needs me right then, or starts fake crying or saying that he's cheating. There's no cheating, I keep telling her. She's just being jealous that everyone else gets turns, but it's making it worse, and now she just glares at him. Help. You know, I've actually been writing about this late recently because I'm starting to write a chapter of a book that I'm gonna be shopping around to publishers to potentially be my second trade nonfiction book. That's like a book for adults, and I'm writing about siblings. I don't know if it's that's what the final book is gonna be. It's still very, very early stages, but I'm writing about siblings, and I've been thinking a lot about jealousy for attention. So here we're gonna use the word jealous because what does the six-year-old desire? Your exclusive attention, Paula. She desires exclusivity. Here, too, I think we can make say yes to the feeling while also expressing how the behavior might not be productive, right? But I think that even to begin to think about correcting the behavior before we name the fear is a huge mistake. First thing to remember is this our kids don't get to pick that they had younger younger siblings. Our kids don't get to pick that somebody else moved into their house. In fact, it's interesting that you gave you used this term, and I've been talking about jealousy, partially because in the best book that's ever been written about siblings, and I don't anticipate my book replacing it upon its glorious throne. It's been sitting there for, I don't know, several decades at this point, is Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine Maslish, the all the authors who also wrote How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, which I think is a great book, but it does not compare to Siblings Without Rivalry, in my opinion. Partially because there are many books about how to talk to kids. There are many books about how to parent well, including mine, Punishment Free Parenting. Go get it everywhere books are sold. Uh I love plugging it, guys. I just really need to do that more. It's just the sales are don't they don't come unless you say unless you talk about it. So anyway, uh there are many good books about parenting. There's not that many good books about siblings, hence why I want to write a book about siblings. But one of the examples that they give in that book is like, imagine that one day, like you're one day you parents leave and they come home with this baby who all of a sudden takes all of this attention up, and you're within two years, you're asked to share your toys. Within a couple of years, often you're asked to share a room. Like, this is a lot to just come home with a kid right one day, and then you're kind of forced into this relationship with them. And the example that they give is they said, Imagine if your partner just came home one day with another wife and said, or another husband, and just said, you know, hey, this they're gonna live with us now. Don't worry, I don't love you any less. They are gonna get a lot of my attention, but I don't love you any less. And uh, you do have to share everything that you own with them, and they are gonna sleep in your room. But, you know, just get over it. I know you had no say in this. It's not like you, you know, me and uh you just because adults choose to live together, kids don't get to choose to live together, right? Kids they just get put together, like like often the personalities within a sibling relationship is very different, and so then just experience it that way and understand that like this too. It is normal to feel envious when your friend gets all this stuff for Christmas. It's normal to feel jealous when here comes this other person who's impeding upon your mom time or your dad time, and so instead of correcting the behavior, I think you name the fear that undergirds that behavior. Hey, I see that you're frustrated that I'm helping your little brother. I want you to know that you know you didn't lose me. I'm still here. I'm still yours. Then physically reconnect to them, put a hand on the shoulder, brief hug, before you try and do any of the problem solving around, you know, he probably doesn't feel very good when you glare at him. Or sometimes I do need to zip up his coat. It's cold out there. If you lead with that stuff, like, well, I have to zip up his coat, it's cold out there. If you start with that, then it's clear that your mind is on that other child and not on them. I'll give you an example from my own sibling dynamic, not my sibling, but in my family, the the kids that I have, not me and my brothers. The other day was my four-year-old's birthday, and my six-year-old, almost six-year-old, five-year-old, did a really good job all day of being a big brother. He didn't do the envy thing. No, he's like, I see, I'm moralizing envy right now. On as I recorded podcasts, but not moralizing envy. Um, but he he he really prioritized his brother the whole day. And he didn't react in any negative way. He probably felt envy about the fact that it was not his birthday, but he really just kept his little brother centered the whole day. And that's a really hard thing for a five-year-old to do. And so as they were going to bed, not the four-year-old, four-year-old is already in bed, as the five-year-old's going to bed with the nine-year-old going into the other room. I said to the five-year-old, I am so proud of you that you made Liam's birthday so special. And I just, I love that that's the kind of brother that you are. Now, my nine-year-old is always that kind of brother. Not to say that my five-year-old is not also that kind of brother, but my nine-year-old has done many more birthdays than my five-year-old. And um, man, he he's always like that. He's just, I take him for granted. And he came to me about 15 minutes later crying. My nine-year-old, I said, What's going on, buddy? And he said, Are you proud of me too? Or are you just proud of him? And I was like, my heart just like a knife through my heart, you know, to see this kid standing on the stairs and the oversized PJs and these like and red eyes. And my heart just broke because I was just like, of course I'm proud of you. Like, and and not just like in the placating way, like, I'm actually really proud of all the things that I just said to him that could also have been said about you, but I just take you for granted because you've been around for longer. And I always, you're always such a good big brother that I don't even think to say that. And that's my fault, and you need to hear that. And so I walked him back upstairs and I sat on the end of his bed and I just said, Let me tell you all the things that I saw today that you did that were really special for your little brother. And I just went through and I recounted all the ways in which I was watching, and that I saw and then I witnessed all these things that he did. And if I had just been like, you know, Ollie really needed to hear that because he's five and he's littler than you, and you don't need to know that because you're not like if I had been defensive, in other words, I would have missed that moment, but instead, I was just like, I'm so sorry that you feel this way, and that I said that in that way, and that's not fair, that I went out of my way to give him this, you know, very targeted. Obviously, I was paying attention, affirmation, and praise, really. And I didn't do that for you. And it felt it felt wrong to him. It was, it was, it was like jealousy and envy, kind of mixed, right? He wanted something that his brother had gotten, but it was something in the context of a relationship. And it what I think what we miss is that when there are sibling relationships, we do need to take those individual moments to have that one-on-one time to to say those things, to name those things. And when our kid says something in response to that, like, I wish that my brother had never been born, he's just always taking you know my stuff, and he's always bothering me, and he's always this and that and the other. That's okay. It's okay for them to say that stuff. In fact, it's good because we're their outlet. We could we can just say, Wow, that's a really hard thing to feel. And it's amazing how quickly they can pivot off of that and go, yeah, but you know, there's sometimes they're okay, and sometimes this and that and the other. But sometimes they need to name that because there is real jealousy for our attention in our kids, and it's not a moral failing, it is adaptive. And I gotta stop talking about this and get to my next question because I could talk about this. I literally could talk about this for the next 25 minutes about why it's adaptive and what the evolution is behind that, and why sibling relationships are often the hardest, because I'm writing about it right now. So uh maybe I took this question in a way that it wasn't entirely meant, Paula. Um, but that's just where my brain is going right now, and so I hope I hope I gave you an answer that that works with you.

SPEAKER_00:

Let me take a break, and then we'll go to Riley.

Jon @WholeParent:

Riley sent an email asking, my eight-year-old gets so weird when his cousin comes over. The second he's better at something, sports or video games or whatever, he shuts down and starts being rude. We just tell him, just be happy for him. But he sulks for the rest of the day and ruins it for everyone. I don't get it. He's so confident normally, it's embarrassing, honestly. Riley, I think this is a this is another really typical and normal thing that kids experience, and it is comparison. I think cliches are cliches for a reason. Oftentimes we don't like to say cliches because they're cliches. Everybody, oh, everybody knows that. But but when we say that comparison is the thief of joy, and that I've talked a little bit about different religions and moralizing different emotions and this and that and the other, basically every major world religion very strongly cautions against comparison because comparison hijacks the brain so fast we we immediately snap into like survival mode. And part of the reason is that comparison is at its core an outpouring of our competitive nature, that humans, like all organisms on planet Earth, had to compete for resources and had to compete for mates and all of those other things. The difference between Homo sapiens, human beings, and all of the other humanoid, that is to say, Homo uh genus humanoid ancestors of ours, or the or not even ancestors like the parallel species. The difference between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals and all the rest, at least in part, according to uh this book Sapiens, was that we were better at taking that competition and moving it not only outside of ourselves, but outside of our groups. So we were better at saying, okay, it's one thing to compete for resources with another human, but if a bunch of humans get together, then we can compete better for resources against other tribes or or other uh genus, homo genus uh species that are around there, homo Neanderthalis and et cetera. And we can compete better against, I mean, just the random animals, and we can survive better as a group. Comparison kind of gets at that middling of that, and it kind of muddies around with the way that our evolutionary biology works, where we are trying to compete, but we're trying to compete with someone who we're also going to live alongside. And that's where comparison comes from. But it immediately pulls us into reactive emotional states rather than being logical. Because if we were ever logical about comparison, we would realize that even comparing ourselves to our past or future selves, like nobody has the same context. And so comparison is always at best a shadowy comparison. Like it's it's it's almost never a one-to-one. It's always apples and oranges to some extent. Because that other person, even if they're your biological twin, they had different parents than you, even though, oh, well, no, how could they have different parents? They're your biological twin, because they literally had different interactions with their parents. They had different interactions out in the world. And it's we're the compilation, yes, of nature, but also of so much nurture that that we to compare ourselves with others is always a false comparison, because they're never coming from the same exact place that we are. And so it's not surprising that we compare ourselves more with those who we are more closely related to. This is why siblings compare themselves a lot, and actually a bigger reason why siblings compare themselves a lot is because their parents compare them. And then that, you know, obviously creates the baseline or the foundation for that comparison to then go out into the the bigger things. And this is why siblings wind up taking on roles. Again, I'm just going down the siblings path today. I'm just thinking about it all day. But we even with a cousin, we do this because it's clearer, it's a it's an obvious comparison because here they are. They're part of our family, they have similar parents, etc. The challenge here is how do we call that out for the eight-year-old without being shamey, without being judgy, and at the same time giving some tools and tactics and tricks and how to work through comparison, doing some real long-term teaching here. Because uh, this is not many of our problems that we deal with on the podcast are things that kids will naturally age out of no matter what, right? Like we can talk all the way on about meltdowns and tantrums in the grocery store. Usually kids by eight or nine years old are probably not doing that so much. Certainly by the time they're adults, they shouldn't be doing that anymore unless there's something really severe going on. Uh, throwing tantrums in the grocery store is something that kids age out of. But comparison is not, in fact, comparison in many ways is what we age into. Two-year-olds don't compare. Uh, eight-year-olds do, eighteen-year-olds do a lot, right? Hopefully, one day the goal is to age out of it again, where we become so secure within ourselves that we stop comparing ourselves. I'm that's what I'm doing at 34. I'm trying to stop comparing myself to other people. But I think we can give our kids a huge head start by giving them the brain conversation. And so here's my script for this one, but but you'll hear it's for an eight-year-old, it's not for a six-year-old anymore, right? Or a five-year-old. I would sit down outside of the moment, right? So I would not do this while the cousin's in the other room and like they're hot and heavy and heated about what's going on. I would wait till maybe the next day and say, hey, so yesterday I noticed that when so and so is here, your cousin was here, you were getting pretty tense. I could I could see it. You were pretty uh you're you were really trying to compete hard with him. That's that's pretty tricky. To have to do that, to feel like you're doing that. It's hard when your brain starts comparing. You don't have to compete to belong here with me. I want you to know that. That's ultimately the thing that people really need to hear when they're competing, when they're comparing, is that belonging is not contingent upon that comparison. So, hey, give them something that's not performance-based, that's not win or lose based. Invite him to come and help you with a task that you're doing, or to sit by you, or to watch a movie with you. Something that breaks that loop where worth is about winning. Where worth is about being on top or dominating or this and that and the other. And this is especially true with boys. And I don't usually say stuff like that on the podcast, but but it's especially true with boys because quote unquote traditional western masculinity, however you want to define that, has a lot in domination as the uh indicator of success. And so competition, compete, be an alpha, don't be a beta, right? And so this is important to do, to decouple belonging and competing or winning. That you don't have to do anything. And this is the moment when you know your eight-year-old probably, oh mom, like don't say that. But you this is the time to say, you know, there's nothing you could ever do that'd make me love you any less or any more. Like, if you were the greatest athlete in the world, if you were the greatest video gamer, if you were the greatest, most rich and successful actor or entrepreneur or whatever, like I'd be proud of you if you were proud of you. But it wouldn't it wouldn't change how I love you. And people are afraid of doing that, I think, sometimes because they don't want to remove the incentive of that life in a full circle back to the capitalist system. A lot of this jealousy and envy stuff comes from our system that we're all a part of, our value system. A lot of us don't want to do that because we don't want to push our kids into f being complacent and they're just gonna play in video games in the basement because they don't care, right, about being successful or having a career or whatever. But I think I think that that misses something fundamental. And that what it misses is that so much of the self-destructive behavior comes from not feeling wanted and not feeling like a person that they belong, and feeling like they have to earn acceptance and love and compassion, and that they have to f they they have to earn belonging. And something that I say to my parents that I work with in the membership, after every single group coaching call, I mean every single one that I've done in the years that I've done group coaching, so probably hundreds of group coaching calls, I've said at the end of every single one, you are deserving of respect, dignity, love, and belonging. And so are your kids. Deserving of respect, dignity, love, and belonging. They don't have to do anything. You don't have to do anything or be anything. You just are. And so I think that's how we end this. Even if you don't get the PS5, even if sometimes it feels like I'm loving your little brother too much, not paying enough attention to you, even if it feels like you can't win against your cousin, you are deserving of belonging and dignity and respect and love. And so go. Henceforth. Thank you for your time listening to the whole parent podcast today. I hope you got something out of it. I have a couple quick favors to ask of you as we end the episode. The first one is to jump over on whatever podcast platform that you are listening to right now and rate this show five stars. You'll notice there are a lot of five-star ratings on this show, whether that's on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple Podcasts. We have a ton of five-star ratings, and it helps our podcast get out to more people than almost any other parenting podcast out there. And so it's a really quick thing that you can do if you have 15 or 20 seconds. And if you have an additional 30 seconds, I'd love to read a review from you. I read all the reviews that come through. If some if you particularly like one part of the podcast or you like when I talk about something or whatever, imagine that you're writing that review directly to me. The second thing that you can do is go and send this episode to somebody in your life who you think could use it. Think about all the parents in your life. Think about your friends, your family members who could use a little bit of help parenting. It's vulnerable to share an episode of a parenting podcast with them. I get it. But imagine how much better your life is as a result of listening to this podcast, following me on social media, of getting the emails that I send out. You can share that with someone else too. And so I encourage you, just go over, shoot them a quick text, share this episode with them, or share another episode that you feel like is particularly relevant to them. The last thing you can do is go down to the link show notes at the bottom, and like I said in the mid-roll, you can subscribe on Substack. It's$5 a month or$50 a year. Uh, I don't have that many people doing it, and yet the people who are doing it have made this possible. And so if you like this episode, if you like all of the episodes, if you want them to continue, the only way that I can keep making them is through donor support, free will donations to the podcast. Please, please, please, please, as you're thinking about the end of this year, as you're thinking about your charitable giving, I know I'm not a 501c3. You can't write it off on your taxes, but if you'd like to give me a little gift to just say thank you for what you've done this year, the best way to do that is over on Substack. Again,$5 a month,$50 a year. It's not going to break the bank. It's probably less than you spend on coffee every week. Definitely less than you spend on coffee every week. Maybe uh less than you spend on almost anything, right? Five bucks a month is very, very small, but it goes a long way when it's multiplied by all of the different people who listen to the podcast sending that over to me. I get all of that money. It's just my way of being able to produce the podcast, spend money on equipment, spend money on subscription fees, hosting fees for the podcast, all of that stuff. Email server fees, all that. So if you're willing to do that, I would love it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I'll see you next time.

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Jon Fogel

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