I have the most perfect easy child! (Huge bragging warning)

[SuZir]

Middle of all difficult child heartbreak my easy child continues to be a total joy. I can't even describe how rewarding to parent he can be. Yesterday he made me so proud I'm about to burst.

He had a tournament this weekend with his team. Saturday evening some of his team mates had sneaked out to nearby city to party and were busted when they came back to sport centre they were middle of the night, more or less drunk. First, my easy child wasn't with them, he was a good boy and sleeping in his bed. Second, it wasn't because he wasn't ask to go with them. He was, two of his best friends in the team were among the busted ones. easy child had declined joining them because there was a game left at Sunday. Even though that game was last of their regular season and wasn't to change their standing in any case. Boys busted will be suspended by the team from playing in first playoff round (they are required to train and travel with them though.) Not having them in the lineup will make it much harder for easy child's team to win that round so easy child and other boys who didn't sneak out are quite angry with them. Still easy child was quite worried and compassionate with one of the boys who has strict or maybe mainly overly zealous sport dad, who easy child thinks will be very hard for his son over missing playoff games. (According to husband who knows that family better than I, easy child's worry is unfortunately not unfounded.) And easy child doesn't even like this boy to begin with. So I'm very proud of him in both making a right decision under peer pressure and being able to be compassionate with someone he doesn't even like and who has just let him and others down and made it much more difficult for easy child's team to succeed. This boy is not only quite a good player but also very difficult to cover, so not having him in the lineup can very easily cost them the series even not considering other suspended kids.

And then at the evening easy child came to me for the help with his school. We have let him swim or sink during the last two periods (they have five of them a year, now we are middle of fourth) to teach him a lesson of time management. He has been sinking. His third period grades were down from 90's to 60's and even one 40 (lowest passed is 50) and he did only make excuses and we pretended to buy them. Now he is again badly behind in his work and had some work due this week he didn't have time to complete. Yesterday evening he came and told me whole sordid tale in tears, admitted he had failed to do the work and manage his time well and asked me to help with sorting it up. So I sat down with him and we made a new schedule for him to make up the lacking work from this period and looked the times he could redo the exams from last period and raise the grades. I advised him to choose from the work that is due this week the ones he can do and go to talk with teachers about getting more time to others today. So he was recognizing the mess he was in, took accountability and asked help. Isn't that one perfect sixteen-year-old boy if there is such a thing?

easy child has always been such a joy to parent from day one. When he was a baby, he was soothed when you comforted him, fussed when he was hungry or wet or wanted some company or be held/carried. He smiled back when you smiled to him. And ever after that he has continued to be so rewarding to parent. Teach him and he learns, be nice to him and he is nice back. he does all age-appropriate milestones and developmental periods at the right time and right way. And he can really make you feel like success as a parent. He is just such a joy to have I would hope everyone would have one of him

 

[DammitJanet]

Oh Im so happy for you. Im glad easy child made the right decision to stay back and not let peer pressure guide him. Good on him. I know how hard that is for a guy. I am sorry this might cause them the game. That is really too bad. I am glad the coaches are giving the players a consequence though even though it will hurt the team. So many coaches think about team first and consequences later. This will make more of an impact.

This really shows what a good parent you have been. Yes even though you parented each boy in the same basic way, the nature of each child took that parenting in and processed it differently. Same thing happened in my house.

 

[Calamity Jane]

Can I borrow him for a while?

 

[StressedM0mma]

That is great. You should be so proud of him.

 

[buddy]

He sounds like a great kid for sure! I admit I daydream that I'd like to have a easy child, but I am not at that phase of life anymore. I luckily had a small daycare and spent more time with many kids than their parents (who were wonderful people )....many I had from 6 weeks old. I loved helping to raise those kids and we still love eachother. I am glad to have had those relationships. And I'm very close to my nieces and nephews. I took care of them too. I do think thats helpful to my feeling better about my parenting skills. I know Q is disabled and it's not my "fault" but any mistake I make, normal human parenting mistakes, I am harder on myself because I always wonder if he'd be a little better if X Y Z hadn't happened.

You're a wonderful mom. Your description from easy child as a baby makes me think that was not so for difficult child to some extent which to me shows he was wired differently from birth. Circumstances certainly influence how things unfold to some degree but I imagine no matter the events in difficult child's life, he'd still have been a challenge to parent.

Just thoughts.....enjoy your easy child! I hope he catches up on his work! Nice job supporting him.

 

[TerryJ2]

Amen!

 

[SuZir]

I am glad the coaches are giving the players a consequence though even though it will hurt the team. So many coaches think about team first and consequences later. This will make more of an impact.

This really shows what a good parent you have been. Yes even though you parented each boy in the same basic way, the nature of each child took that parenting in and processed it differently. Same thing happened in my house.

One good thing on juniors being under adult/pro teams thumb. They drill to junior coaches that player development takes importance over winning. From easy child's team statistically around 20 to 25 % turn out to play some level of pros and they really want to teach these lessons to them when they are 16 and not when they are 26. I think the parent team has some future expectations at least for the boy easy child doesn't like and maybe one other now suspended boy.

I know Q is disabled and it's not my "fault" but any mistake I make, normal human parenting mistakes, I am harder on myself because I always wonder if he'd be a little better if X Y Z hadn't happened.

Your description from easy child as a baby makes me think that was not so for difficult child to some extent which to me shows he was wired differently from birth. Circumstances certainly influence how things unfold to some degree but I imagine no matter the events in difficult child's life, he'd still have been a challenge to parent.

I have always felt that any parenting mistake we have made, difficult child has been more sensitive to. Same mistakes with easy child don't seem to matter much or can be settled with just correcting our parenting or an apology and some making up and reassuring. Of course, one should also always remember how much good we have done for our more challenging children. I bet any other option Q had for his future would had been greatly inferior to being your son. You may not be a perfect mom, but I'm sure you are darn good one. And one with more resources (just your educational background, intelligence, share will etc.) in many ways than vast majority of people. And in the end same goes with my difficult child. Even a fact that difficult child was born in that maybe 10 % of people worldwide who have an access to level of health care that made him survive his illness when he was only half a year old. And even in that 10 % of people worldwide I and husband belong to the lucky part with many resources available for us in every way. For example just a fact that I could mommy track my career and even stay home for several years when boys were young were invaluable. easy child would had done just fine if he would had gone to day care when he was ten months old, when the well paid parental leaves ended. But difficult child would had been toast. He needed so much down time, had so much separation anxiety and social situation were so draining to him, that for him the few play dates and parent-child(ren) clubs a week were enough.

And yes, difficult child wasn't like that as a baby. He couldn't be soothed, screamed non-stop for his first year (except an about month he was in hospital and too sick to scream middle of it) and feeding him was an nightmare. Part of it was colic and part likely sensory issues. So our boys certainly have been different to parent from the get-go. Still I hated it when well-meaning people when easy child was a baby told me how happy they were for me that my second baby was a good or nice one. I mean, I was very relieved and happy too, that easy child was such a sunny and easy baby, but calling him good or nice compared to difficult child. What that was supposed to make difficult child? Bad or naughty baby? Just because he was feeling uncomfortable and we didn't have tools to fix that for him?

I was lucky enough to be one of those with whom pregnancy hormones worked very well and I was madly, deeply and forever in love with my oldest from the moment they lied him to my chest before the cord was even cut. I know that for many it doesn't work that quickly and they fall in with their babies over longer time (and don't end up loving them any less), but I fear that if I had been one of those less prone to their hormones, difficult child being so unrewarding baby to take care of could had caused some real attachment issues.

But with easy child all that has always been so easy. He is an easy child to love and he brings us so much joy it is unbelievable. I have at times wondered what a different view we would have to kids and parenting and life more general if easy child would be our only child.

 

[buddy]

Maybe you wouldn't have appreciated it as much if he was your only? ??

I agree, difficult child couldn't help being in pain, and I think thats a huge part of what happened to Q too. So much pain and no one could stop it. (Well if they'd done an mri a year earlier he'd have been spared not only pain, seizures, but brain damage too, makes me sick) but for daily caregivers, no one could make it go away. Of course that shapes many who go through that.

Thanks for saying such nice things. I hope you're right. I do love him. I try hard to do well. But, I'm very human.

 

[susiestar]

Your easy child sounds like a delightful young man. I think that making the choice to stay in and sleep rather than go ahead and party was a wise choice and showed character. His compassion for the teammate he isn't so fond of shows even more character. It is easy to have compassion for someone you like or see as an 'underdog' but it is harder to have it for someone you don't much like.

I am glad you got such an 'easy' baby with easy child. It is wonderful that you got to experience more of the happy side of parenting with him. Our difficult children are not easy, but they come with some very different, equally as wonderful and intense rewards as our pcs' do, we just have to look harder to find them sometime. I have said for a long time that J was my reward for allowing Wiz to live past age six and thank you super-sized the reward because we were working so hard to figure out how to help Wiz and enjoy him - and because we loved him enough to really fight to help him.

 

[DDD]

what a delightful update. Truthfully I've never understood how the same parents have such different children. on the other hand I do think that the oldest is more likely to become a difficult child simply because new parents aren't as confident and "perhaps" the nervousness passes on the the first baby. Personally I've never known a 2nd or subsequent child to have colic etc like so many of our first babies did. Hugs. DDD

 

[InsaneCdn]

Sorry, DDD... my oldest might be the bigger difficult child but that didn't really start until school age... k2 was a majorly challenging baby.
There's always an exception!

 

[BusynMember]

I'm so happy for you, Suz. But I have to disagree...I think my easy child Jumper is the best kid on earth (wink). Actually, they sound like they have a lot in common. One of the traits of PCs seems to be common sense, lack of impulsivity, and the ability to think about the consequences, three things that difficult children mostly seem to lack.

It is really a joy (I get it) to parent a child who seems to be so resilient and almost always make the right choices and to own up when they don't.