Friends comparing...what do you say?

So, our neighbors are public school teachers. They have 3 daughters around the ages of our kids. The oldest is in 2nd grade, as is my oldest. Almost every day, their oldest comes out to play and proceeds to “quiz” my oldest daughter asking, “Do YOU know how to do THIS?” and if my daughter says, “No” (which she frequently does since we are not using Common Core as the school system here does…and since we do more living books and not the same science, etc curriculum they do) she proceeds to say, “Homeschool isn’t even real. You don’t learn anything!” It makes my daughter feel so bad and unintelligent. Their parents are the sweetest people who would never say things like that to our face, but who knows what they say behind closed doors. I’ve told my daughter to just tell her that she doesn’t want to compare because our schools are very different, but we will all end up learning all the same things. Any advice? Our middle kids are one grade apart, so hopefully they won’t play the comparison game as much.

@purplecurls27 – That is very disheartening to have that happen to your child! I applaud the response that you’ve given to your daughter. It is such a valuable lesson to learn not to compare. Reinforce what you know about your daughter…that she is smart, diligent and most importantly loved! If it persists, you might consider talking to the parents.

We have a family member who is a teacher. When my children were younger she wanted to try to get my then phonetically challenged child to read aloud. It took a couple of occurrences for me to get hip to what she was doing. I decided that if it occurred during our next visit I would politely pull her to the side and ask her to stop. Thankfully it didn’t happen and more importantly my phonetically challenged child is no longer challenged in that area. :smile:

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I agree with @purplecurls27 - your advise to your daughter was spot-on. While you don’t want to encourage your daughter to brag about the things she does know, perhaps she could invite them to see some of the projects she has done? Again, not in a bragging way, but so they can see that she does exciting things also. Another idea is to have the girls (your child and the neighbors) come up with a project they can work on together after school. A nature project, an earth project - something that will last a few weeks - be hands on and get them working together instead of comparing there differences.

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