Everyone knows that person that has to one up you. Not just in good things ('oh you went on vacation? That's nice, My last vacation was in Japan' and then they walk away and you have to resist the urge to throw something at the back of their head), but in bad things. You had something bad happen but they have obviously had it worse (Oh did you get in a car accident? That's too bad, I was in a 12 car pile up once).
The worst person with this for me was someone at work. I have this memory of standing outside my office having just come back from having lunch with a friend. I was still on maternity leave so I had my oldest with me. She was probably about 6 weeks old at that point. We had a hard time feeding her at the beginning so sleeping and eating and pretty much everything was really hard. I was exhausted and about three seconds away from crying or screaming at any point. So the guy from work comes up to me and asks how sleeping is going. I told him that things were getting better but were still super hard. His response was 'just wait until you have another one and you're trying to feed that one and then the baby starts crying.' Now I'm not entirely sure what happened after that. I might have blacked out for a second. What I am pretty sure of is that I didn't burst into tears or punch him in the nose. Both of which were high on my list of desires at that moment.
Little did I know that the phrase he used would become one of my favorite phrase in the arsenal of parenting one-uppers. The 'just wait until'. I absolutely 100 percent cannot stand this phrase. It always manages to make you feel small and invalidated. It is used like this:
Person 1: Aw man, dinner last night was difficult, my one year old just kept throwing food EVERYWHERE. It was a mess.
One-Upper: Just wait until they throw the food off the side on purpose.
Person 1: (Thinks to themselves, oh GREAT now I have another thing to look forward to, is my kid really going to do that too!?)
There is absolutely no benefit or help in their comment. Literally all they've done is made it seem like Person 1's problem isn't even a big deal. I always leave these conversations with extra anxiety. Like if I'm having a hard time now, how much worse is it going to be, why did I become a parent in the first place?? Until my anxiety spiral leaves me in a tizzy.
Now, however, I have the ultimate parenting competition trump card. I didn't want this particular card AT ALL but it is fun to bring out when someone is annoying the ever living daylights out of me like the aforementioned person at work.
Now these conversations go a little more like this (for the purposes of this conversation, they don't know I have twins):
One-Upper: Oh you have kids? How are they doing?
Me: Oh, they're good, you know, my oldest is refusing to go to sleep right now so bed time is a pain.
O-U: Oh try having a baby and an older one, then bedtime is insane.
Me: Oh I do. I have twins and an older one. You are right though, It can be insane.
O-U: (turns purple and tries to discreetly get their foot out of their mouth) OH! I didn't know you had twins! I don't know how you guys do it (and then they walk away quickly).
This works unless the person has triplets in which case I just kiss their feet and bow to their greatness because I do not know how they do it.