I have two great boys: both are well-adjusted with plenty of friends, do well in school, have good manners (at least most of the time-they’re not perfect!), are kind-hearted and are top players on their travel soccer, basketball and baseball teams. More important than being great athletes, they exhibit true sportsmanship-know how to truly work together as a team and be supportive of their teammates during times of victory as well as times of defeat.

Am I proud? You bet I am! Am I bragging? Probably? but I see nothing wrong with being proud and sharing one’s children’s successes with other parents. I am openly receptive and supportive of other parents’ pride in their kids? accomplishments.

I am modest, however, around other parents I know. I feel like this is practicing good sportsmanship with other moms. We’re all in this parenting thing together. I’m even one of those moms who clap for the opposing team (at least I did when my kids played at the intramural level; travel sports are a whole other ball-game-pardon the pun- much more competitive).

But I’ve gotten off-track? When my boys were babies, it really bugged me when other moms compared their babies? milestones with everyone else’s. Maybe this was different to me because babies just naturally do things at their own pace; their progress is more nature than nurture. I didn’t exactly feel proud when my oldest son crawled at about 50 miles per mile up the stairs when he was six months old, while other babies in our playgroup, not yet mobile, sat and played with their toys. It was funny and also exhausting. And that’s just who he was-a little man on the go. Nothing I or my husband had done had caused him to crawl early in fast-forward. We certainly didn’t teach him how.

What’s different as our kids get older is that we can lay at least some claim, as their parents, to when they treat others fairly and kindly, are serious students because we have enforced the importance of reading and education at home, and even when they excel at things like sports, at least in part because we are out there encouraging them, playing catch or shooting hoops with them after school everyday. Our kids are born with certain talents, weaknesses, likes and dislikes. It is our job to help them along the way, provide help when help is needed and let them use their strengths to their fullest potential.

Sometimes it’s okay to express our pride and recognize a job well done when we realize that our own character-building life lessons are helping them grow into great human beings. Bragging about random things that babies and children do at their own pace, like how early baby rolls over, though, is a different story.