The Trend of Keeping Up with the Joneses Grows Worse in Kindergartens (Public Health Network)
Outside a Beijing kindergarten, Ms. Wang looked deeply troubled as she picked up her son. With both she and her husband busy at work, her father-in-law handled picking up and dropping off their son, Leilei. One day, Leilei compared toys with classmates to see whose was best.After school, Lei Lei's classmate was picked up by a parent in a car, while Lei Lei's grandfather arrived on a bicycle. The classmate climbed into the car, pulled out a sports car model, and shouted at Lei Lei: "Look, this is all brought back from Japan. Do you have one? You're so poor."Lei Lei burst into tears on the spot and refused to get on his grandfather's bicycle. After returning home, Lei Lei was gloomy and insisted he wouldn't go to kindergarten anymore, even falling ill because of it.
According to a kindergarten teacher, such comparisons frequently occur among preschoolers. As an educator, she confessed feeling deeply troubled whenever she overheard children engaging in such rivalry, sensing that today's children had lost the innocence inherent to their age.