How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Other Parents

Do you ever catch yourself comparing your parenting to other families—wondering if you’re not doing enough or feeling guilty because someone else seems to have it all together?

Comparison is one of the biggest hidden causes of mom guilt, dad guilt, and parenting burnout. Whether you’re scrolling social media or watching families at church, comparison sneaks in—stealing your confidence, creating anxiety, and making it harder to be a present, intentional parent.

When we focus on what other families appear to be doing, we lose sight of what our own kids actually need. In today’s episode, we break down why comparison is the #1 habit that quietly drains joy from parenting, how it leads to emotional overload, and the simple mindset shift that helps you reconnect with your family, build confidence, and practice joyful parenting—without regret.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:

• Why comparing yourself to other parents—both upward (“they’re better”) and downward (“at least I’m not them”)—undermines your self-esteem and creates unnecessary parenting stress.
• How comparison keeps you from being a present parent and distracts you from your family’s unique needs and rhythms.
• A healthier, more mindful parenting approach that lets you learn from others without judging yourself—or them—and helps restore joy to your home.

00:00 Introduction and Free Resource
00:28 The Habit That Drains Parenting Joy
01:08 The Comparison Trap
03:01 Personal Parenting Stories
05:14 Lessons Learned and Moving Forward
06:55 Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser

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Transcript

Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Before we get started today, I wanted to make you aware of a free resource that we have called 30 Second Micro Moments of Intention with Your Kids. This is a list of quick and easy things that you can do to have meaningful connection with your kids in 30 seconds or less. You can get that by going to our website at parentsmakingtime.com/freeresource.

Go there today so that you can start building lasting memories. One micro moment at a time. Now, on today's episode, we're gonna be talking about this one habit that almost every parent falls into at some point, often without noticing. This habit secretly drains the joy out of raising our kids. We're gonna be talking about how this habit, this mistake, messes with our confidence and what to do so that you can actually enjoy the season of parenting that you're in.

Stay tuned.

This is Parents Making Time. The show that helps busy parents put family first without burning out. We [00:01:00] are Anthony and Jennifer Craiker. We don't just give parenting tips. We help you become the parent you want to be.

Jennifer: So be honest with yourself. Have you ever looked around at other parents, you know, and wondered one of these two things, gosh, they're such amazing parents compared to them, I'm failing at this, or, well, at least I'm not doing that. Compared to that family, we are winning. So full disclosure, there have been times where I have said both of those things to myself. 

Anthony: Yeah. I think most parents probably have at some point or another, but that's a, a mistake that we make, right? Comparing ourselves to other parents comparison in any form is a mistake. It's often said that comparison is the thief of joy and i've found that to be true.

Unfortunately, it's like a natural tendency that we have to compare ourselves to others, because somehow in our minds we think it's going to be helpful to us and we end up judging and it's just, it's really not helpful, but we do it a lot. [00:02:00] An article in Psychology Today mentions a study that says that more than 10% of our daily thoughts involve making comparisons of some kind, and that includes comparing ourselves to others.

Jennifer: Yeah, so the truth of it is though, is that when we compare ourselves to others, we're really harming our own self-esteem, and that works when you're comparing yourself to others and saying, gosh, they're so much better than me. Or you're comparing yourself and saying, gosh, I'm so much better than them both ways that's gonna harm your self-esteem. It also takes attention away from our own family and keeps us from responding to the unique situations that we have going on within the walls of our own home and really does harm our own families. 

Anthony: Yeah, and it ultimately ends up becoming a distraction, right? Because we get in our own heads and then we're not present and we're not focused, and we're not being intentional about raising our own families.

Jennifer: So really what we should be doing is being supportive of others rather than comparing, being supportive of our friends and others who are parenting without judging them and without comparison, it really does [00:03:00] help everyone. 

Anthony: And we kinda learned this lesson the hard way. Yeah, our first child, Bella, our oldest, she was an amazingly well-behaved child and when she was younger we could go out places, we go to church, we could go to restaurants, we could travel and, and she was really amazing.

We rarely had problems with her. And so we kind of got a little high and mighty in our parenting as young parents and thought, why do parents think this is so hard? Like why? 

Jennifer: I remember thinking that other parents were making it so hard. Yeah. Much harder than they needed to. 

Anthony: Right. And we couldn't figure out why parents couldn't keep their kids under control because our kid was amazing.

And if, if we can do it, surely everybody else can. Well, the good Lord decided that we needed to be humbled and so he sent us our next two. First Natalie came and then our son Ethan. Now Natalie. Was a a lot more challenging. She had some pretty good fits and uh, 

Jennifer: she was just [00:04:00] busier. She just was constantly on the move.

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. She was, she was always on the move and she didn't, yeah, she didn't like to be still in one place, so, so we did have trouble going out in public with her, and we started to realize, Hmm, maybe this parenting thing is harder than we thought. And then came Ethan, our son, and I'm still exhausted all these years later.

Jennifer: I honestly think we could do a whole episode on his fits and we've talked about one before. Yeah. But we could make a whole, maybe we will make a whole episode about our embarrassing stories from his fits. 

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. Ethan's toddler fits were epic. And you know, we went from being those parents with this really well-behaved young child, you know, eating dinner at a restaurant to the parent having to take their child out of the restaurant feeling incredibly embarrassed because everybody was looking at our screaming kid and so, 

Jennifer: and wondering why we were such terrible 

Anthony: parents. Right, right. We could, yeah. I mean, there were, there were times where Ethan was so bad at public that we, [00:05:00] we not only felt the judgment, I, I mean we actually had people, people, we received some, yeah.

We, we had people. Give us some judgment thinking that we were, you know, not, not doing whatever we were supposed to be doing, and we were so just flabbergasted. 

Jennifer: Well, in, in hindsight though, I'm grateful for that evolution from our children because we learned so much from the hard, you know, if we had stayed in that easy place, we would never would've grown as much as we have.

Yeah. And so I am grateful for the growth, but it is laughable to think how good we thought we were with number one, and then how much we realized we weren't. 

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. We, we really weren't all that. Our children just had completely different temperaments and we got lucky that our first one was really, 

Jennifer: she spoiled us.

Anthony: Yeah. Really well behaved. Yeah. So anyway, the point here is that you can't compare yourself to other families, to other parents. Every situation is different and it just, it does no good to judge one way or the other. 

Jennifer: But it is totally appropriate to observe what other families [00:06:00] are doing. Sure.

And use that in your thinking and thoughts with your own family. Right? You could look at that and say, oh, that's not gonna work for us. I'm glad it's working for them, or I wanna try that. Maybe that might be something that works, maybe it's not, but you can try that. And there's just a fine line between observing and comparison, and we wanna stay in that observing place and not comparing ourselves to them.

When we're comparing, we're focusing on situations that you have no control over that aren't even relevant to your own family, and that sucking the joy out of your, your life with your family. So our perception of other families is based on very limited information. It may or may not be grounded in reality 'cause we don't know all of the details about what goes on behind closed doors in someone else's home.

What we perceive as a functioning and happy family could be wrong. But likewise, what we see as a dysfunctional family could also be wrong. So we need to be really careful about crossing that line between observing and comparison. 

Anthony: So if you liked what you heard today, we would be so grateful if you'd leave a rating [00:07:00] or review and extra grateful if you shared this episode with a friend who could use it.

Jennifer: So in our next episode, we're going to be sharing something that we are doing currently in our home that we feel is really making a difference in how we're connecting with our son. We really wish we'd done it sooner, so we wanna share that with you now so that you can consider how it might help you and your family.

And until next time, make time to become the parent you want to be.