International Nesties
dulcemariamar1
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Cousin Competition
Is this normal? Growing up there was a big age gap between my cousins and me so I dont know if this is normal but was there like a competition betwen your cousins about who was the better looking, smarter, nicer, etc.?
It seems that my in-law family are always comparing my nieces. Is this normal? They are only babies but I feel bad if this is what they are going to have to live with for their rest of their life.
Re: Cousin Competition
So far this is normal in my IL family (V is the only granchild on my side so no cousins)...we have a niece who is 18 months older than V and a niece who is 1 year younger (both from DH's older sister).
When V was born it was constant 'she doesn't do this like Lila, Lila was more physical, V is more quiet, blah blah' and now add in Madelyn our new niece as well. It's very frustrating for me.
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no I don't think that's normal
I was close in age with my cousins and we were friends, we didn't compete like that
I think that's sick that parents do that to young kids, it sure doesn't set a good example....
On my mother's side, this kind of competition is totally normal. Now that we are all adults, we know it and it has become a family joke as to where we rank on my grandmother's favorites list.
But when we were kids, it was intense. Two of my cousins lived with my grandmother, and they were the favorites. My brothers and I lived far away, so our infrequent visits were special, but my cousins who lived in town were always being compared to the favorites. My grandmother's open and obvious favoritism toward my only female cousin drove a wedge between not only my cousin and me, but it was the beginning of a truly terrible relationship between my grandmother and me. So much so that when it came to decide who could be cut from my wedding guest list, I did not hesitate to cut her first.
Even though my female cousin and I are now on good terms, my grandmother is still trying to destroy it -- she pitted us against each other when I was preparing to move to Australia. My cousin's boyfriend had been offered a 2-year assignment in Melbourne and my grandmother commented that the offer came with a house, a car, and all kinds of perks, including first class travel, and my cousin was in a much, much better position than I would be in, marrying a teacher and living in a rural area in a rental house. My cousin and I laughed about how she was ranking us, but it still irked both of us.
I am not talking about if they are reaching their development marks. I understand that it would be normal for parents to talk about that.
I mean that they make comments about how they look and their personalities.
I have a similar situation that went in the opposite direction. I have a cousin who is 5 days younger than me (and our dads our twins - she was unplanned, which makes the coincidence weird). When we were young there was actually no problem, but when we got older, especially after I got married, her mom was always like "oh, well X went to a bar last night and 5 guys hit on her and she just had to turn them all down because she was just there having fun with her girlfriends."
She would constantly talk about all the guys my cousin dated, and it was really obnoxious to all family members. My cousin wasn't embarrassed by it, though. If she was around, she jumped right in, relating the most recent "adventure," usually involving being hit on by at least 3 guys. Sigh. I don't know if you call that direct competition, but it annoys the heck out of my mom, who has to put up with it whenever she mentions something about me. But, said cousin got married in September so we'll see what the bragging turns to now.
So as a short answer - I think it's not unusual but it totally depends on the parents / grandparents.
When my Grandmother would visit us she would always go on about how great our cousins were (they were another brother and sister set of similar age to my brother and me but we only saw them a few times a year as we lived far apart). I used to find it really annoying because she made them seem like they were the perfect children. However only once I got older I realised she would go back to my cousins and tell them how great we were! We weren't that close to our cousins to begin with due to the distance but the competition created by my Grandmother definitely didn't help us feel closer to them!
My grandmother does this with both my cousins and my mom's sisters. No matter what they do, it's like my cousins and my aunt sh*t gold.
My mother really gets shafted when it comes to recognition from her mother. My mom was recently down in FL visiting my grandma and my grandma told someone, in front of my mom, that her whole family lives in Arizona. My mom was like, "Umm, hello?!?! Me and my whole family, including 2 of your grandchildren and a great grandchild live in the PA/NJ area." WTF?
This has created a big rift in our family and as a result I barely have a relationship with my cousins. It's sad really.
It's not a competition in my family, but more just comparing personalities. My sister has 3 kids and we have 1 so we talk about at what age they started walking/talking/being bratty/etc.
I never felt like it was a competition with my cousins either. If it was I didn't know about it.
ETA: I just saw your follow up. It's not normal to have a competition based on looks or personality. That's not going to help anyone.
I have an aunt who would do this constantly. It never affected my relationship with my cousins though, but rather made me dislike her. I usually avoid her now that I have a choice in the matter, but I saw her a few months ago and saw that now she does the exact same thing with her grandchildren.
I guess there are just people like that. The only thing you can do is ignore and avoid them if possible and reaffirm to the kids that they are all equally great.
My female cousins always did the comparison thing. We are all close in age and both of them are really tall and were always really skinny. I was always average sized. They always kept going on how I was fat and/or they looked better (only if the 2 of them were together, if it was just 1 of them and me, it was fine, the 2 of them and me was mean.)
I got back at them though :-) First when boobs started growing, I'm the youngest and smallest of us 3 and mine were the biggest of the 3 of us (and yes, as a 12/13 year old that's apparently VERY important.) They were SOOOO pi$$ed off about that.
And then came school. I did all honors high school while they did the "I'm only slightly smarter than a monkey" type program, I was the first on in that entire side of the family to go to college. (Only one other family member has gone to college, my 5 years older male cousin went to college about 3 years after I did. (he actually did really good by starting out in the lowest level form of education NL has and he kept just adding school upon school until he had the level needed for an art college. It took him 8 years longer than me to get to that level, but he did do it, which is really really cool!)
When we were 21 or so the girl-cousins tried the whole 'we're better because we're prettier' thing one last time. I explained to them that looks fade, but stupid is forever. That was the very last time they ever tried to compare us.
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What I'm looking forward to in 2012:
Eating our way through (northern) Italy on vacation
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