{"id":1033,"date":"2010-10-20T03:34:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T03:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/characterinkblog.com\/day-276-only-by-comparison-part-ii-of-v\/"},"modified":"2015-10-06T20:50:27","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T00:50:27","slug":"day-276-only-by-comparison-part-ii-of-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/characterinkblog.com\/day-276-only-by-comparison-part-ii-of-v\/","title":{"rendered":"day 276: \u201conly by comparison\u201d part ii of v"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><br \/><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\">Continued from yesterday\u2026.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><br \/><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\">Our kids might fight and say mean things to each other, but at least they aren\u2019t doing what the neighbor kids do\u2014cussing each other out and squealing out of the neighborhood at twice the posted speed limit. Our kids might not listen and respect the pastor as much as we would like for them to\u2014but at least they\u2019re not texting other teens and playing games on their cell phones during the service like the kids two rows up are doing. Our kids might not work as hard as we think they should on their chores and household responsibilities, but at least they do a job or two each day\u2014unlike a nephew or niece who never does anything around the house. And on and on it goes. And yet it is all <em>only by comparison.<\/em><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><br \/><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><br \/><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\">Case in point one: A couple of years ago Josiah (then ten; child #6) had a bad case of strep throat and ended up dehydrated and very sick. He was admitted into the hospital for eighteen hours to rehydrate, gets some iv antibiotics, etc. He went in at eight pm and came home the next afternoon. In the course of eighteen hours, for some reason still unknown to us, Josiah received an award\u2014patient of the week. Now, remember he was only there for eighteen hours\u2014and at least ten of those were spent sleeping. During the eight hours he was awake, I had to tell him at least a dozen times to quit asking so many questions when a nurse came in the room. (\u201cWhere does that lead to?\u201d \u201cHow does that give fluid?\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s in that fluid?\u201d etc. etc.) What did Josiah do in eight hours of precocious questioning that warranted him the \u201cpatient of the week\u201d award? Nothing\u2014that\u2019s the point. He didn\u2019t do anything bad. He didn\u2019t complain, fuss, fight with me or the nurses, throw fits, argue, or disagree. He got an award not because he did anything great\u2014he got an award because he didn\u2019t do anything bad. Talk about low expectations! Josiah is a great kid with tons of character; however, this award didn\u2019t make us especially proud of him. We would have been proud of him if he had gotten an award for helping the nurses straighten the parent room or for encouraging another sick child or for cleaning up his toothpaste in the sink. But he got an award simply because he wasn\u2019t bad. <em>Only by comparison.<\/em><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><br \/><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\">More recently, I was editing at McDonald\u2019s (my favorite editing spot, believe it or not) with Jacob, then age nine (child #7). He was taking a \u201crecess\u201d from his school work and went to play in the play area. After a little while, he came back out to me with an elderly lady following close behind him. He said, \u201cMom, this lady wants to meet you.\u201d I introduced myself, and the lady said that Jacob was being such a good boy in there that she had to come out and find out for herself what his mom had done to raise him that way. She went on and on about well-mannered he was, how he didn\u2019t fight with the other kids, etc. etc. Then she questioned me about how we \u201ckept him from being like the other kids in there.\u201d She then shook both of our hands and left, telling us that she was going to tell everyone she knew about this little boy and his homeschooling mommy. After she left, I asked Jacob what he had done to earn him such accolades, to which he replied, \u201cI didn\u2019t do anything, but the kids in there were really bad today, so maybe I just seemed good because they were being really bad.\u201d <em>Only by comparison.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Continued from yesterday\u2026.Our kids might fight and say mean things to each other, but at least they aren\u2019t doing what the neighbor kids do\u2014cussing each other out and squealing out of the neighborhood at twice the posted speed limit. Our kids might not listen and respect the pastor as much as we would like for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[643,488],"tags":[267,330,106,317,310],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.5.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>day 276: \u201conly by comparison\u201d part ii of v - Character Ink<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/characterinkblog.com\/day-276-only-by-comparison-part-ii-of-v\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"day 276: \u201conly by comparison\u201d part ii of v - Character Ink\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Continued from yesterday\u2026.Our kids might fight and say mean things to each other, but at least they aren\u2019t doing what the neighbor kids do\u2014cussing each other out and squealing out of the neighborhood at twice the posted speed limit. 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