Every Indian parent has either said it or heard it: "Sharma ji ka beta scored 98 percent." The comparison to other children — neighbors' kids, cousins, classmates — is so embedded in the social fabric of Indian parenting that it often functions as background noise. But developmental psychologists are increasingly clear that it's harmful noise.

Comparison as a parenting tool has an intuitive logic: surely knowing that other children are achieving more will motivate a child to work harder. The evidence, unfortunately, doesn't support this. What social comparison actually does to most children is undermine what psychologists call self-determination — the sense that one is acting from one's own goals and values rather than to measure up to external standards.

Children who are constantly compared to others learn several things, none of them good. They learn that parental approval is contingent on relative performance rather than personal growth. They learn that their worth is not fixed but comparative — always subject to revision based on what someone else has done. They develop anxiety about performance situations and a tendency to avoid challenges where they might not measure up.

The alternative is not the absence of expectations. It's grounding expectations in the child's own trajectory — celebrating progress from their baseline, acknowledging effort independent of outcome, and keeping the frame of reference internal rather than external.

The "Sharma ji ka beta" phenomenon also reflects parental anxiety more than pedagogical wisdom. When parents compare, they're often managing their own anxieties about social standing and future security. Children are perceptive enough to sense when they're being used to manage someone else's feelings, and it doesn't serve the relationship.

Raise your child by their own standard. The Sharmas can worry about their own beta.