Forget the stories of tough coaches that put unbearable pressure on their gymnastic proteg?e to win in the game. Coaches yelling, cussing, and behaving badly isn’t what helped Shawn Johnson finish with the best overall score in the Beijing Olympics trials. It was coach Liang Chow’s words to her:

“Perform like a champion. And don’t be afraid to make a mistake.”

For Shawn, the fact that she isn’t paralyzed by the thought of making mistakes on the beam is why she can relax, focus on doing her best. The result is that she performs near perfect instead.

Shawn, a 16 year old from Des Moines, IA. is now the favorite to win in women’s individual all-around games. The love for gymnastics instilled in her by coach Chow has managed to seep into her performance. Driven to win, yes, but also driven by her love to compete, and the love for her coach.

Chow runs a training facility with wife Liwen Zhuang with a focus on having a “fun, loving and supportive environment.” And often emphasizes to his trainees that they are “sisters”.

That spirit of camaraderie in competition should be emulated in sports everywhere.

Source: NBC Olympics

All this coverage of the Olympics lately has got me thinking about how parents handle the delicate balance of teaching our children how to be competitive. I’m not talking about the massively competitive spirit that is needed in order to reach Olympic status, but instead the everyday competition that we encounter every day as parents of young children.

The first time I really realized how much competition is involved in parenting was when I was sitting in a Gymboree class with my daughter. She was so young that she wasn’t even sitting up on her own yet, just like every other baby in the class. In walks another mom who regularly attended the class. She plops her daughter on the mats and her daughter sat up on her own. The rest of us stared in amazement, congratulated the mom on the baby’s amazing achievement, and then went on with the class.

Here is the thing: I’m pretty sure that every single one of us went home that day and tried to practice sitting up with our babies because the next week there were a few more babies with this amazing new talent, and every one of the moms were beaming as though their children had just graduated valedictorian from Harvard.

I know all babies develop at their own rate, so there is no telling if all the babies who could suddenly sit up on their own were able to do so just because it was their time, or if it was because their moms had worked with them on it. The point of the matter is this: Some of the fiercest competitions happen far from the Olympics. They happen in the playgrounds, at play areas, and at playgroups. Any time you get more than one mom in a room you might as well get the podium and medals ready because there’s going to be a competition.

I try not to compete with other parents with regards to which baby is talking and which toddler is potty training, but it’s tough. I think as parents we innately want to put our kids up on a pedestal, so it’s an urge that we have to keep reigned in lest we appear obnoxious.

On the other hand, I would like to go on record as promising that if either of my kids someday goes on to an Olympic competition I’ll be right there in the stands, screaming “That’s my baby!” as loud as humanly possible.

I was chatting with a grandmother who had five children. I asked her how she managed with five, and she said that it was easy raising them. “What’s your secret?” I asked. “Oh, I sent them all outside to play during the day, then they came home for their dinner.”

And if you talk to your grandmother, or great-grandmother, it’s likely she did something very similar with her kids. That was just what you did back then.

Can you imagine a modern mom doing that? Haven’t times changed? And Grandmothers don’t think it’s changed for the better.

Grandmothers are watching in horror as their children turn into over-ambitious, competitive parents with pampered, demanding offspring, according to a new report into how women’s experience of motherhood has changed over the generations.

Grandmothers are worried about their daughters trying to balance motherhood and work and their own lives, the pressure on their grandchildren to attend music classes and gym classes and yoga for babies, prepare a gourmet menu of homemade baby food every day, do exactly the right amount of tummy-time and encourage their babies to meet all their milestones on time – no, make that just a bit earlier than the other babies in their playgroup.

Professor Rachel Thomson, co-director of The Making Of Modern Motherhood report, a study of moms, grandmothers and great-grandmothers, found that

Grandmothers believed the range of choices available to their daughters not only turned mothering into a competition, but also undermined their daughters’ confidence in their ability to care for their children. ‘The gains offered by this story of progress were dwarfed by the losses in the grandmothers’ eyes,’ she said, ‘including the creation of demanding babies.’

Pick up any baby magazine and it’s full of the latest gadgets and gizmos that claim they will help your baby learn music, spelling, and make baby smarter and generally better.

And then there’s all the safety research. Bis-phenols in plastic? I have the BPA-free bottles for my baby, says one mom. Well, I use the glass bottles, say another. I have aluminum chemical free non-leaching bottles! says the third.

Local parenting magazines have adverts for all kinds of baby classes for even the youngest babies. When my son was a couple of months old, I called up about one class. The teacher told me that they “have a wonderful learning environment to teach the babies to roll over”.

What, we need classes to teach our babies how to roll over? (My son did manage to learn perfectly well without the class.) There seems to be a new product or service every day to teach your baby to do something that their mom, or older brothers and sisters would have traditionally taught them.

I think I like being a mom in 2008. I like all the options of classes, products and entertainment available to me and my son, I try not to fret when I see a younger child do something my son can’t do yet, and I think I’m well-educated enough about safety issues to make informed choices about how to parent my son. Even though it does make me worry when there’s a new recall or a new danger seemingly every day.

Would you rather have been a mother in simpler times, a generation or two ago?
Or it is better for moms and babies in today’s world with all the new benefits, but all the new stresses?