Learning as a competitive sport

With Tiny (the middle one) at the age where she would have just started school I've been coming across a lot of other parents whose kids just have, and remembering how it was when my eldest was at school. She went right through school and I wish she hadn't, I wish I'd taken her out, (but that's for another post). The competition over whose child can do what, or more accurately whose child can do the most, was so prevalent. I think it's worse these days because of the way school is. I not only get asked what letters Tiny knows, but also get regaled with how much homework their child has (WHAT?!! they've only just started school, the poor little mites. They shouldn't be doing homework, they should be playing). The impression given by all this 'busy stuff' is that you've got to take education so seriously and just ram knowledge into your children or they'll just get left behind and be on the scrapheap by the age of 6, and then what about SATS results? If they don't achieve a high score presumably they'll never have a good job and will be thorougly miserable for the rest of their lives.
SO I ought to be feeling really smug about home edding, shouldn't I? Unfortunately the hangover from the school competitiveness doesn't just disappear and you can end up still being caught up in it. I feel like I'm being battered over the head by some parents who want to convince me how good the school is where their little on goes and that my two would be so much better off there than at home, and by others who probably want to bolster their need to be seen to be giving their child the best possible start by rehearsing what their child is learning when they're with other mums. It's only natural, you get validation of what you're doing that way. So I turn to the home ed community for a little sanity and for the most part that's what I get, but this competitiveness that we've all been taught from day 1 can really get in the way. Instead of hearing what other parents do and reading their blogs, and being inspired, I find myself being cowed by all the stuff they're doing that I'm not, or rather my perception of what they're doing. The feeling that I'm 'not doing enough' has been following me around since I first started home edding 4 years ago. I have to give myself a stern talking to though, because that's not what we're doing this for. It's not about stuffing facts and figures into young minds, nor about packing as much into a day or a week as we can. Even if the kids learn absolutely nothing (as if that's possible) , they will have benefitted from being able to do things at their pace, not at the pace a school might dictate, nor rushing to keep up with other families, who, after all, are just doing the same thing as us; running their lives to suit their family and its own unique style.