I read one of those “Dear Abby” type columns the other day and saw an interesting discussion. The person had written in to lament how she was reasonably successful, smart with her money, paid attention to her children’s well-being, kept a clean house and treated others fairly.

Doesn’t sound so bad. But she was unhappy because her sister was the complete opposite. Her sister wasted her money, had several bad habits, couldn’t hold a job, screamed at her kids, had “questionable” friends and lived in a messy house. The problem, in the writers eyes, was that their mother virtually ignored her (the good sister) and paid all her attention to the bad sister. Mom paid the bad sister’s bills, watched her kids, cleaned her house, made excuses for her behavior and was generally concerned with her well-being. While the good sister did not get any such attention.

The columnist called this “The Curse of the Competent.” It means that we tend to focus our attention on the person we think needs it most, which sometimes means that we ignore those who we think are getting along fine without us.

As a parent, I see myself doing this. Pookie requires more daily attention, but not any more love than Geetle. I work hard every day to make sure that she gets just as much attention as he does. I need reminders sometime; this article was a good one.

I think its just human nature to make most of your interactions with other people more reactive than proactive. You see a situation and you react. Rarely do we proactively say or do something. The mom in the article saw her messy daughter had a hard time keeping her house clean, so she mopped the floors. That’s reactive, and it probably did help the messy daughter. To act in a proactive way, she should say to the other daughter, “I see that you have been very busy with work and managing your house, can I take the kids to the movies on Saturday and give you some time off?”

Basically, the message I got out of the article was that you can’t assume that the “competent” don’t need your help and attention. You should not give them less attention. You should give them a different kind of attention, but not less.

This article is timely for us for another reason. We have a newborn on the way. After the baby comes, Pookie and Geetle will have to get used to BAGD and I spending more time with the baby. It would not be fair for us to shortchange Pookie and Geetle’s needs. We will work very hard on this, because its important.