This Life

A Truce in the Bragging Wars

David Flaherty

By BRUCE FEILER

Published: February 1, 2013

MOMMY BLOGGERS (and their daddy counterparts, too) agree about almost nothing. Some favor co-sleeping; others do not. Some favor banning video games; others do not. Similar disputes surround breast-feeding, vaccines, cursing and whether it’s O.K. to force-feed your child broccoli.

But a rare consensus has emerged on at least one topic. What subject could possibly be so clear-cut it has elicited once-in-a-generation unanimity?

That parents should stop bragging about their children. 

That’s right, apparently the civil rights issue of our age is that you have the right to remain silent — and I have the right not to hear about — how your daughter learned to read at 16 months, your son scored 12 goals in the soccer game, and your darling got into Brown, his first choice! (All these example were taken from actual, antibragging diatribes.) 

Consider these headlines from recent months. BabyCenter: “I Hate Hearing About Your Gifted Child.” Café Mom: “8 Most Ridiculous Things Moms Brag About.” WebMD: “How to Handle Parents Who Brag About Their Kids.” Yahoo! Voices: “Are You Sick of Being One-Upped by Fellow Moms?” Berkeley Parents Network: “My Friends’ Saintly Kids.”

 

Don’t get me wrong. I get the annoyance. A friend of my wife’s once boasted about her daughter’s high Apgar score. But I’ve also heard plenty of parental brags that seemed not only justified, but downright heartwarming: the tone-deaf parent marveling at a child who can sing; the parent who never went to college proud that a child got a scholarship; the harried mother of three grateful that an older sibling is acting sweet toward a newborn. 

Parenting is tough enough; can’t you take a victory lap every now and then?

So why has this otherwise minor corner of family life elicited such strong feelings? Part of it may be that we live in an era when many children scurry from pottery class to gymnastics to the chess club. With more activities come more chances for scores, ribbons and gold stars. Also, with Facebook, Facetime, Twitter and the like, there are more outlets for showing off. “Let me just snap a picture of that trophy you got for taking your first poop!” 

Whatever the reason, the time seems ripe for a truce in the bragging wars. I set out to devise some guidelines for acceptable chest-thumping.

1. Brag about how good a child you have, not how good a parent you are. Adriana Trigiani, the best-selling author of “Big Stone Gap” and “The Shoemaker’s Wife,” says she’s most annoyed when parents trumpet their child-rearing skills instead of their good fortune. “I’ve noticed when parents brag, it’s usually a reflection of their wonderful parenting skills and not their child’s natural abilities,” she said. “When I see people like Donald Trump on TV taking full credit for how his children turned out, that’s the kind of bragging that gets under people’s skin.” 

2. Brag about effort, not accomplishment. One of the signature parenting ideas of the last few years — praise effort not achievement — applies equally well to boasting. Brad Meltzer, who wrote “The Fifth Assassin” and two nonfiction books about children, says he doesn’t mind if parents talk about their children’s passions. “If you say, ‘My kid loves reading,’ that’s O.K.,” he said. “If you say, ‘My kid is the best reader in his grade,’ I start the hate machine.” He added: “It’s the difference between murder and manslaughter. It’s all in the intent.” 

3. Brag in context. Mr. Meltzer says he generally doesn’t mind if parents brag, as long as they don’t pretend they’re Stepford parents and their children are little angels. “I want to hear the bragging in the context of real, gritty, poopy life,” he said. “If you’re trying to sell me your perfect life, the hate machine starts humming again.” 

4. Follow “the bragging formula.” Another common piece of advice — each time you criticize someone, you should give multiple compliments — applies equally well in reverse. Each boast about a child should come surrounded by three negatives. My son is on the honor roll (but still wets his bed).

Laura Zigman, the best-selling author of “Animal Husbandry” and “Her,” says that she welcomes such a bragging formula but is concerned that for braggy parents, even the counternegative might end up being boastful. As she wrote in an e-mail, “My son got an A+ in Sanskrit ... but he still can’t write his name in Mandarin!! #dummy!” or “His room is so messy he’s going to discover new particles of matter in it someday! #MIT-bound.”

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