I understand your feelings. My difficult child was also a total easy child until the end of eighth grade. The first time that she got in trouble was at a Beta convention of all things.
My difficult child has also said that she felt like she didn't fit in once she got into high school. I think that is also the time that her anxiety disorder really kicked in. Many mental illnesses seem to manifest during early adolescence. I think that the easy early years makes it harder to understand when things go wrong.
All of use blame ourselves at one point or another. I still wonder if we could have avoided years of drug and alcohol abuse if only I had been more attuned to what was going on with my difficult child at an earlier age. For years, we just blamed the problems on typical teenage rebellion but there was so much more to it.
~Kathy
