Almost every Indian adult can recite it from memory. Sharma ji ka beta got ninety-eight percent. Sharma ji ka beta already practices violin every morning without being asked. Somewhere in your childhood, a boy you may never have met was held up as the measuring stick you kept failing.

Now ask yourself a harder question. Do you remember the marks you got? Or do you remember how it felt to hear his name?

Most of us remember the feeling. It is a small, specific ache: I am not the child they wanted to be talking about. Many of us swore we would never do this to our own children. And then a Tuesday evening arrives, a cousin's report card shows up on WhatsApp, and the sentence leaves our mouths before we have decided to say it.

Why the comparison feels like love

It helps to be fair to the parents who did this, including our own. In many Indian families, comparison was never meant as cruelty. It came from a world with scarce seats in good colleges, fierce competition for jobs, and very little margin for error. A parent who had seen how narrow the door was wanted their child to run toward it.

There is also a cultural logic underneath. In a close-knit community, everyone's children are visible to everyone else. Achievement is a shared, public thing. Pointing to another child can feel less like an insult and more like pointing at a map: look, this path exists, and someone is walking it.

The intention is usually care. The problem is what the child actually hears.

What a child hears when you compare

Psychologist Leon Festinger proposed social comparison theory in 1954. People evaluate themselves by looking at others, especially when there is no clear objective standard. Adults do this constantly. We check how our friends are doing, then quietly adjust how we feel about ourselves.

Children do it too, but they do it without the tools adults have built. A ten-year-old cannot say, "Sharma ji's son has a different temperament, different resources, and probably a tutor." He hears something much simpler: my worth is a ranking, and I am not at the top.

Two things tend to go wrong from there.

First, the child's attention shifts. Instead of asking "How am I improving at this?", he starts asking "Where do I stand next to everyone else?" That is a different question, and it is a worse one for learning. Self-determination theory, developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, argues that people do their best and most lasting work when they feel autonomy and competence, doing something because it matters to them and because they can feel themselves getting better. Constant outside ranking pulls motivation toward proving and away from growing.

Second, the comparison is attached to the parent's approval. The child learns that love is the thing on the other side of a leaderboard. Some children respond by working frantically. Others quietly stop trying, because it is safer to be someone who didn't try than someone who tried and still wasn't Sharma ji's son.

The praise problem hiding next door

Comparison has a cousin that looks kinder: praise that ranks. You're the smartest in your class. You're better than all of them.

Carol Dweck and Claudia Mueller published a well-known set of experiments in 1998 comparing children who were praised for intelligence with children praised for effort. The children praised for being smart were more likely to avoid harder tasks afterward, apparently because difficulty now threatened the label. The children praised for effort were more willing to take on a challenge.

The lesson is not that you should never say anything warm. It is that the target of your attention matters. When you point at a label or a ranking, the child learns to protect the label. When you point at what they did, they learn they can do more of it.

A different kind of comparison: against yesterday

Here is the part worth keeping from the Sharma ji tradition. The instinct to say "look how far this can go" is not wrong. Aspiration is good. The trouble is the comparison group.

Researchers who study motivation often distinguish between mastery-focused goals (getting better than I was) and performance-focused goals (looking better than others). Children in mastery-focused environments tend to persist more after setbacks, because a bad day is information instead of a verdict.

So the fix is not to remove comparison. It is to move it. Compare your child with their own earlier self. Last month you couldn't read this page without help. Today you read the whole thing. That is a Sharma ji worth having, and he lives in your own house.

What to say when the old sentence is on your tongue

When another child's name rises to your lips, it usually means you are worried about something specific. The comparison is a clumsy container for a real fear. Name the fear instead.

Instead of "Why can't you be like your cousin?" try "I'm worried you're not practicing as much as you wish you were. What's getting in the way?"

Instead of "Look at how hard he works," try "I noticed you gave up quickly on that problem. What did it feel like when it got hard?"

The second versions share something. They are about this child, they invite a reply, and they treat the child as someone with reasons instead of a ranking.

Your next moves

  • Catch the sentence tonight. For one week, notice every time you mention another child's grades, talents, or behavior in front of your own. Don't fix anything yet. Just count. Most parents are startled by the number.
  • Write down the fear behind it. Next time you want to compare, finish this sentence privately: "What I'm actually afraid of is..." Then say that to your child, in plain words, instead of the comparison.
  • Praise a process, not a position. Tonight, name one specific thing your child did: "You kept going after the third wrong answer." Skip "you're the best" and "you're smarter than."
  • Make a then-and-now. Pick one skill, whether reading, a bike, or a Hindi word set, and show your child something from three months ago next to today. Let them see their own progress.
  • Tell them your own Sharma ji story. Share one memory of being compared as a child and how it felt. Children rarely hear that their parents were ever small, and it tells them the pressure is not a verdict on them.

When the comparison comes from the family

Often it is not you but a grandparent, aunt, or well-meaning guest who says it, and in front of your child. You don't have to start a fight. A quiet, warm redirect works: "She's been working hard on her reading lately. Ask her about it." Afterward, check in with your child privately. A child who hears you softly decline the comparison learns that someone is on their side.

A closing thought on belonging

Many children of immigrants carry a double load: the pressure of the new country's competition and the older, quieter pressure of family expectation. Stories can help carry it. Indian tales are full of children who are not ranked by anyone: Krishna the mischief-maker, Hanuman who forgets his own strength, Prahlad who thinks for himself. None of them wins by being better than a neighbor. They grow by meeting something real.

That is the idea behind KathaKids, a place where children meet these stories at their own pace, with narration, in their own time, so heritage feels like something they inherit and not something they are graded on. If you'd like a gentle starting point, you can explore it at https://baalkatha.lumenlabs.works.