I was just reading a portion of a book about parenting. I picked it up for my daughter-in-law. In his book Kevin Leman, a therapist, counselor and talk show host both on radio and TV, talks about three different kinds of children. The chapter in his book was titled "Which Kids Cause the Most Stress? He sees the powerful child, the avenging child and the attention getter as categories he fits them in.
I have three sons. Right off I could see the avenging child and the attention getter child and could put them in their rightful positions, but I don't see the powerful child in play in our family dynamics. That usually is created when you have a passive dad and a pleasing mom who has a very permissive style of parenting. We didn't have that going on so I guess we missed out having the powerful child. Thank goodness. It doesn't sound very fun.
Anyhow my three boys were very different. If they were all like my first, I could have had 10. He was the easiest, most cheerful, easy to please child on planet earth. At birth we had to make him cry, a sign of what was to come. We used to call him a little old man. After his first month he never cried until he hit his teens when the emotional floodgates opened accompanied by hormones. But other than that, he was easy to please and wanted to please his parents and others in authority whether it be coaches, teachers, youth workers, or bosses.. He slept thru the night at 10 days, had all his teeth coming thru by his first birthday and was walking at eight months. He was amazing and very driven in all that he ever did. In HS he held the school record for the mile (and still does) and won countless school accolades, state championships and awards. He was regularly featured in our daily newspaper for sports and loved by coaches and teachers alike. Every teacher thru the years would say, "if only I could have a classroom of Bobby's." His study habits were awesome and contributed to where he is today for sure.
He is now a research scientist working towards his Ph.D in Neuro Science. He is currently working on TBI Epilepsy which is Traumatic Brain Injury that results in Epilepsy. There are only a few researchers working on this curently in the whole world.
Eleven months later came my second child, another boy. He was so different right at birth. He came out screaming his head off having a hissy fit from the getgo. He was as dark as my firstborn was blonde. He was a jokester unlike his brother who was so serious. At about a year old we had to train him not to bite his older brother. He had quite the temper. Where did that come from? ME. He got my genes in that department I'm afraid. The good thing tho was he learned fast. He was smart. As he grew into a very adorable toddler and preschooler we could see in public he was extremely shy. While my firstborn dove into anything and was very easily engaged, my second child hung back and was content to play near the kids but not in and among them. We put him in nursery school. The whole year he didn't talk. The teachers fell in love with him because he talked with his big brown eyes. He was so shy, painfully so. By first grade we were alarmed at his speech. He was stuttering badly. Into speech classes he went for the next 5 years or so. That helped tremendously. He learned techniques and was able to cope, not getting rid of it completely but so much better. I still can hear his struggles from time to time, but he manages it quite nicely now.
He too followed his big brother in sports. He too was captain of his teams, not quite attaining the success of his older brother in sports or academics but he held his own. He faced his insecurities by facing them head on. His sports ability and leadership qualities opened a big door for him to get into VMI where he blossomed into the young man he is today. He was a bit difficult in HS but not terribly so. His temperment and how he operated was much different than the first and we did get spoiled as parents with the easy one coming first. He is now a LT in the Air Force setting goals all the time and is currently looking into completing his masters in the Arenautical Engineering Field. With a wife and young son, this isn't easy. He's doing well.
Then all hell broke loose with the birth of the third and probably the reason I don't have a fourth. He came out a full two pounds bigger. He was the most beautiful baby as a result and the reason I quit pouting for not having my girl. While he was a pretty baby he wasn't so pretty with his temperment. While his two brothers slept thru the night by two weeks, this one took a full three years to figure that one out. Taking him to the doctors was useless. They could find nothing wrong with him. His pediatrician basically said some boys especially need to have contact with their parent to feel safe. He woke us alot. When he could speak he always had an excuse and he still does that today. He's good at excuses. I remember once really losing it when he told me at three years old in the middle of the night that his "hair" hurt. Another night it was his "eyebrow." I told him his hair was dead. it couldn't hurt and if he didn't go to sleep he was sure to be as well.....No, I didn't exactly say that but he was an exhausting child and sleep deprivation is not fun especially when you wake up to care for three little ones every day. I had three in three years.
In school he started out gangbusters. As the youngest he picked up what he older two brothers did. He was reading quite well at four and was put into special reading in first grade. He was reading way above level. His math wasn't so good tho. It was a struggle and we later found out he only tried in those things he enjoyed. Something was always sacrificed. In grade school math and in jr high foreign language and in HS both. I had lots of teacher conferences regarding this child. He was not applying himself. He could care less about schoolwork. His idea of doing book reports was reading the back cover and putting it on paper somehow. Later if was cliff notes. I don't think he's read anything like a whole book since second grade now. His thought was if he didn't need it now, why bother? The problem was he found basketball by second grade because of his older brothers' participation in the local recreation dept.
This new sport took over his lfe. He spent hours playing ball. One time in a blizzard he was out in the driveway playing hoop shoveling every few minutes so he could bounce the ball. Another time he spent 8 hours on a hot summer day....all by himself perfecting his shot. By fourth or fifth grade people were talking about his future stardom. He could do things with a ball that the HS kids wanted to do. He was actually showing some of the HS kids how to spin the ball on their knees and their fingers. He could spin the ball on each finger in succession. I remember his gym teacher pulling him out of class in fifth grade so he could demonstrate what he could do with a ball for the younger kids. By his freshman year in HS he scored as much as 44 points a game and had to sit out because he was scoring too much.
He ended up getting picked for a special state team by word of mouth that resulted in two trips to the Nationals. All this by eighth grade. He was good, but his instruction taking was horrible. He was not one to be coached easily either by parents, teachers or coaches. He always knew what was best. He drove us crazy and as a result he got a reputation for not being coachable. That hurt him in alot of ways in HS. He was hardheaded and had to learn the hard way. By his junior year, he quit basketball and went into depression mode. It was horrible. The coaches, and teachers were not happy with him and neither were we. He was a difficult child but we managed to get thru it. He was well liked by his peers and was voted most athletic turning to track in his last year of HS with great success but never attaining what his older brothers did in track because he wouldn't go out for it earlier. Thankfully he turned himself around his last year of HS redeeming himself in the eyes of his teachers, coaches and parents. He also blossomed like my middle child in college.
He went to college with a solomn look on his face, not really wanting to go but resigned to and fell in love with a beauty named Aly. She has done great things in helping him turn around to be a much more positive, fun loving young man he is today. He ran Div 1 Track and is now being sponsored financially by shoe companies. He has probably changed the most. He wants to be a writer and is now very busy trying to get a business off the ground while attending his last two years of college.
I now breathe a big sigh of relief. They are all fully functioning adults and I don't have to be responsible for them anymore. While a mom never stops worrying about them, it's different. Their decisions are theirs to make and the burden is off us to do so always thinking what's in their best interest. It's funny tho, we still get the phone calls asking us what we think about this or that and while they don't have to listen to us anymore it's still nice to know they care about what we think.
My three sons. I'm proud of them, not only for what they have accomplished and how far they have come but also for who they are. They are all kind, compassionate, polite and loving individuals that is easily seen by all that meet them.
Now it's time to work on the grandkids.......my new grandson is almost four months old.
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