I'd love you if you were a garbageman-accepting one's own

I am quoting this from the interview of Brad Meltzer on NPR yesterday. He was being interviewed about his latest book"Heroes for my son". He mentions that the biggest lesson that you take away from the book is "Love yourself first and everything falls into line." I think it is the most important lesson in self-worth to teach yourself and the ones around you. In the daily grind of rushing everywhere from early morning till late into the evening -we seldom remember that push ourselves and people close to us to achieve impossible goals and are stretched too thin in the process.
Coming back to the title of this post- I am guilty of setting high goals for my child and am always wondering how she is doing compared to her peers. Just yesterday she mentioned that the her teacher gave the class solid blocks to build something tall and her structure was 10 inches tall. The question that immediately popped into my mind was " So how tall was the tallest one?" I stopped myself just in time from blurting it out. In the past though I have not been so cautious and have always wanted to know if she scored the highest in the spelling test or ranked the highest in the math game. Every time she discusses an achievement-she always asks me "Are you happy, Mamma?" What a crappy lesson in self-worth I am teaching her! I have done well academically in the past and hence set higher academic goals for my child.
I am sure a sports jock would have similar aspirations for their off springs and keep pushing them to be as good as them. I have seen people around me pushing their children day in day out to aspire for higher and bigger goals. The other day I saw a Chinese American child -about 5 -6 years in my daughter's swimming class. The coach had put them on the deep side of the pool and this was this child's first time in such a deep side. He was terrified and was crying and shivering. The father should have stopped the child for that day.But he kept getting more and more angry at that kid and kept him asking to jump back in the pool.
We are not just happy if our child excels in one thing. They have to be multi-faceted. When we meet someone new we ask " So what extra-curricular activity does your child participate in?" We compare our child with every other accomplished child around us to see how good they are and how much more can we stretch our child to be at par with the other kid.
People call me or email me just to talk about how accomplished their child is. You might say publicly -" No I don't push my child that hard." But do you really believe that in your heart? Are you not a tiny bit envious when someone else's kid has done better than yours? Are we setting up our children to be like us- where the current status of our life is not good enough; there's always the next level to achieve. On the flip side, there are parents or institutions who are happy with mediocrity- but then that's a post for another day.