It’s hard to keep from bragging up the kids

You shouldn’t brag about your kids because everyone will hate you. This is one of those rules you learned early on, way before you even had kids, when your friends were going on and on bragging about their kids and you made a vow never to be like that.

The problem is nobody cares about how great your kids are. OK, your mother cares, and possibly your dad. So go ahead, tell them about the report card, and the soccer goals, and even the science project that got only an honorable mention (and would have done better except that the boy with the volcano’s dad is an engineer and obviously constructed the whole stinkin’ thing).

Your kid is special. Your kid is amazing. You need to sing it to the world. You have this joy and this pride in your heart, and if you can’t brag, what are you supposed to do with the joy and the pride? Just holding it in can’t be good for you. I bet it could cause a heart attack, or stroke, or even eczema.

My dermatologist tells me that the itchy patch of red on my eyelid is eczema. I nod. He gives me a small tube of goo to put on it. I will use the goo, and I will not tell him the real reason for my symptoms. I will not tell him that my daughter, a mere first-grader, got invited to compete in the big chess tournament. I will not tell anyone. I will scratch in silence. I will call my mother again. She’ll say “Wow!” again. I will wish for a bigger reaction.

Even on TV they’re talking about not bragging about your kids. Katie and Matt are showing footage of bumper stickers announcing little darlings who did this or that, and everyone is laughing about how awful that is. They are giving tips on how to deflect the pests who can’t stop yapping about their kids.

Nobody is talking about what the parent who needs to brag about her kid is supposed to do about the urge. There has to be something you can do. Maybe there is a way of bragging that doesn’t sound like bragging, something borrowed from all those passive-aggressive methods of arguing you are so good at.

Yes, here it is. I could tell the story of how the chess teacher came up to me and complimented me on the great job I’ve surely been doing teaching my kid advanced strategic chess moves. I could tell the story of how I stood there and had a choice. I could have said: Dude, I don’t know a rook from a pawn. But no. I just smiled and said, “Thank you!” Because in that moment I got to be a person I’m not and never will be, a brainiac, an egghead chess woman, the sort of person who would choose mathematical puzzles over TV. Oh, aren’t I so pathetic? I lied to my daughter’s chess teacher! (No, I withheld the truth.) And does everyone get the subtext? Imbedded in the story is the news that my kid, a mere first-grader, got invited to compete in the big chess tournament.

Yes, I like this. I will try this out on my sister Claire. Claire is tricky because she has three kids and she never, ever brags about any of them. All her not bragging makes my bragging that much worse. She just smiles and says, “Great!” and goes all supportive and complimentary on me, making no mention of her son Matthew, who in fourth grade got put into seventh-grade math and who probably has taken a world title in chess that Claire has never bothered to mention. Claire has always been better than me at every single thing, and now she is better at not bragging.

I reach for the phone to call her and not brag, but the phone rings, and it’s Zoe’s mom. “How are you?” she says. “Oh, my God, Anna got invited to play in the big chess tournament!” I blurt out all at once.

“Wow!” she says. “I am not surprised. We always knew she was smart. Like Tritan is smart. Only Anna has the concentration.”

“But Tritan has the imagination!” I say. We brag about Tritan, who is not my kid or hers, but a friend’s. A buffer. I bring up Zoe’s leadership skills, opening the door. Zoe’s mom goes on about Zoe’s emotional strength, and I applaud, and then we talk some more about chess. Then I let Zoe’s mom brag, and not because of all the skin rashes she has been having. But because she lets me brag. And we brag, brag, brag, encouraging each other’s bragging, because we are bursting at the seams, and for some of us this is just how parenting works.

And for Katie and Matt and the rest of you, think of all the scorn you can vent just knowing that somewhere in America, two moms are bragging their brains out over the phone lines. Think of all the rashes you won’t get as a result. Then you can thank us for it. Or better yet, thank our kids. Aren’t they terrific?