Yes of course. For my parents I think they just decided it wasn’t the hill they were going to die on. They figured, as did I, and as actually happened, that my mediocre grades and high ACT score would be enough to get me into a decent state school. Would they have preferred that I got straight A’s and a full ride to Harvard? Probably, but what they got was a kind, decent, loving, good human who just didn’t give any fucks about good grades.
That’s one for the win column!
My eldest also couldn’t give two fucks in High School. Never cared what anyone thought. March to his own drum. Unlike your parents it drove us crazy. We did not feel that was him being easy. He like his three sibs has grown up to be a sturdy adult. It took a bit but he did eventually decide to apply himself. He’s in a neuropsychiatry fellowship now. I figure he’ll be fully launched in time to retire!
Again, many of us worry too much about stuff not under our control.
His retirement or yours😏?
His is the joke.
My daughter would have been an easy kid - if my son hadn’t existed. My son would have been hard even if he had been an only child. He turned out much better than I was afraid of - I thought he’d still be living at home with a dead end job. But he’s 35, has had the same employer for ten years with multiple promotions and owns a co-op. If someone had told me this would happen when he was 15, I would have asked for some of whatever they were smoking.
My younger one is an easy kid. I mean, he’s only 9, so who knows, he might get more difficult later. At least for now, he’s sweet, kind, funny, does what his parents ask him to do, doesn’t get upset easily, does great at school. He’s a little on the shy side but does make friends. Gets along with everyone.
My older one… was not an easy kid. She’s actually an easy high-schooler now, but it was a lot of work up until then. I used to joke that she’d clearly never read any of the parenting books, because none of the tricks in them ever worked with her, but my younger one had, because all the parenting books worked on him. I’m grateful that we had her first, because if we’d had my younger one first, I would have thought I was an awesome parent and could have become insufferable about it. (Not that I’m a bad parent, at least I don’t think so, but I can’t take nearly as much credit for my younger one as I wish I could; he was born that way.)
My husband will tell you that his parents weren’t perfect, but once I asked him, when we were thinking about having kids, what he would change about the way his parents brought him up, and he couldn’t think of anything. Now, maybe that says more about his memory than about his parents, but it certainly makes him unique among basically everyone I know. (I thought his parents were absolutely wonderful – I won the parents-in-law lottery!)
I have resisted answering in this thread because anything I could say could be construed as fighting the hypothetical, to say it mildly, But this thread is old enough now that an honest answer might not be out of place.
No.
Despite a divorce, my ex-wife and I have very similar attitudes on how to how to raise children, and while she is technically a single mother, they seem really easy. (Age 8 and 6)
I tend to rage (but never at my kids) and my son does too, but he has learnt, almost by himself to seclude himself until he is calm - a self “time-out”. I wish I had had that skill.
My daughter is just great.
Our oldest started sleeping through the night after what seemed like a few weeks. She (identified as he at the time) was an excellent student through elementary school, as everything came so easy. During that period she was easy. She started only doing assignments when it suited her in middle school, and it got worse in high school. She never failed a class because she always aced the finals, Got a big scholarship, but flunked out after a year of barely going to class. Drifted from school to school, but finally graduated this past January. She’s been a substitute teacher for the past year and a half and has enjoyed with it. She’s moving to Chicago to be with her girlfriend and pursue an education career. The hard years were very hard. Our son didn’t sleep more than a couple of hours at a time for the first two years of his life. He was pretty easy after that, although he also goofed around in high school. Like his older sibling, he did very well on the SAT and wrote his way into a competitive program despite a lackluster GPA. He killed it in college. Magna Cum Laude, Faculty award for his major, met his girlfriend freshman year and they’re still together after almost 6 years. He’s supported himself since graduating. Those first couple of years were excruciating, though. Overall, we’re proud of both.
I was a relatively easy kid who got straight As without any encouragement, who attended church twice a week and volunteered and was teacher’s pet. I followed all the rules, even when nobody was watching, and never lied. But I also had undiagnosed inattentive type ADHD which made it genuinely stressful for my mother when she told me to do something and I didn’t process the order or I did it wrong. I don’t forgive her for how she reacted (insults and violence) but now that I’m parenting a child with probable ADHD, I feel for her. It can be stressful as hell.
Is my kid easy? By some metrics, incredibly. He started sleeping through the night at six weeks old and still sleeps exceptionally well. He is self motivated to learn and bloody brilliant - he taught himself multiplication at age three. YouTube sped along his learning considerably. He’s five now and reads very well. Mood-wise he is super chill, not easily prone to pitching a fit, and when he does they are short and he bounces back to his jubilant baseline pretty regularly. He doesn’t tend to destroy things or cause trouble for its own sake, he is incredibly kind hearted and sensitive and just the kind of person you want to be around all the time.
Okay, cool, but he’s also autistic, in the middle of the spectrum, and the year we had to get him evaluated and diagnosed was one of the most stressful of my life. Trying to help a kid simultaneously with fine motor, gross motor, speech, feeding, and independent living felt impossible until we found the right therapy place. So that’s hard, right? But he responded to therapy beautifully. A lot of autistic kids don’t. And every time we hang out with parents of other autistic kids, I inevitably think, “Shit. This could have been a lot harder.”
As parents I think we do pretty well. My husband is superhuman as a father, demonstrating an endless amount of stamina that I frankly don’t have. We both teach him about whatever he wants to learn and do lots of activities with him. We have taken extra time to work on skills like fine motor at home. I taught him the binary sequence, even. Nobody told me I should do that, I just thought it would be cool and he would like it. If we have any strengths as parents, its our willingness to meet him where he is, whether it’s something where he’s struggling or excelling, we will accept him and help him grow.
I don’t know if it makes me good or bad but my approach with my kid is radical honesty. We spent his birthday celebration today with 16 people including 9 kids under five, Og help us. I got testy with him in the restaurant after he knocked over an entire glass of water and then thought it would be fun to maybe knock over another one. But when I started to be controlling he escalated very quickly toward panic - he is extremely sensitive to the energy of people around him. First we did some breathing to de-escalate, then I said, “I’m sorry I got angry, I’m pretty stressed out by all these people and it’s not your fault.” And he rightly noted that the arrival of his favorite plush race car seemed to calm me down. Which it did, because, you know, it calmed him down.
I will honestly answer anything he asks me, from death to fetal development to why tardigrades are so resilient. I am this way because I can’t be any other way.
The ways in which I feel I’m failing him: He gets too much screen time, we still haven’t figured out how to improve his diet after two years of feeding therapy, but I’m sure I could do more if I had the energy. Because of my energy crashes, I have a hard time playing sometimes, but lately he just wants to ask me a million questions while snuggling in my lap, which works for me. Because of my ADHD I have true moments of innatention, not device-related but me just lost in my own head. I’ve had more than one “shit, I was supposed to feed you an hour ago” moment. And I haven’t yet figured out the best way to manage his attention issues, but I’m sure repeating the request over and over or saying, “pay attention” isn’t it.
It’s hard to know how we’re doing because the bar is so very low relative to my childhood. But we get a lot of positive feedback from people around us, so that feels affirming.
The stuff I CAN control, I’m not that worried about.
I wouldn’t call them “easy”. I have a son (10) and a daughter (8).
My son was tested on the autism spectrum at 5. He does well at school and actually got into a private middle school we were looking at for next year, which we think will be a much better environment for him than the public middle school. He does basketball, flag football, and lacrosse, although he’s pretty unathletic and terrible.
The main issue (probably because of his condition) the only things he is really motivated to do is gaming (Fortnight in particular) or Lego. He’s become more proactive about doing his homework, but it’s still a bit of a struggle for him to “get” it at times. Socializing is also a bit of a challenge for him as well.
My daughter is rapidly becoming a lazy spoiled brat. She’s pushy and demanding and prone to fits when she doesn’t get her way and spends way too much screen time if left to her own devices (no pun intended). And it’s a constant argument (especially with her mom) getting her to do anything.
With our different personalities and parenting styles, plus my wife’s extended family of dumdums in the mix, it creates a lot of pressure on our marriage (which to be honest, I frequently fantasize about simply walking out of).
Have you considered having her tested for autism too? It can manifest very differently in girls than boys. What do her teachers say?
If your son is 10 and on the spectrum and his public school hasn’t yet suspended or expelled him you’re doing a lot of things right. Keep it up. Be observant about the private school-they often don’t have the resources to fully serve neurodivergent kids and they are not required to by law, unlike the public system. He will have fewer entitlements to accommodations there (504 or IEP, etc. and less flexibility with behavior, discipline also). Make sure the tuition is refundable if it doesn’t work out.
I don’t know how much his current IEP actually helps. But discipline has never been a problem. In fact, when I seen the students in his current class, I often wonder if my son is the only one who ISN’T neurodivergent. The middle school he’s going to has smaller classes and is much quieter, which should be better for him.
We’ve also thought about getting my daughter checked out as well. Mostly because her reading isn’t where it should be.