The Beauty of The Difficult Child

I have a difficult child.

I used to say I had a child with ADHD. Then it was a child with Anxiety. Or maybe it was food allergies. Or trauma. Or perhaps Oppositional behaviours.

The child has been diagnosed with all of these and more.

But the fact is, from the moment this child was born, the child was difficult. This is a child that cried from 5pm to midnight every night. This is a child that woke at 3pm after just two hours sleep, screaming, when the only thing that worked to settle the child (I’m avoiding saying he or she he, because you don’t need to know which of my children it is) was dancing to Thunderstruck by ACDC.

This is a child that for three years woke from every nap screaming and crying. Who required about an hour of comfort for the pure torture of having woken up.

This is a child that is so sensitive, that my own frustration and anger regularly becomes the child’s. I am not able to feel anything without the child feeling it too.

This is a child that takes the blame for everything, but feels that we place the blame there and resents it.

This is a child that never lets an argument pass, never walks away from a fight, and never accepts responsibility for any actions.

This is a child that is so smart that any situation can be taken advantage of and is.

This is a difficult child.

Yes, some medications help. Yes, some therapy helps. Yes, some parenting tactics help. But nothing will stop this child from being difficult.

The child is simply a difficult person. A difficult person is unlike a difficult child. When people are young we think they are all meant to be obedient and quiet and tidy and get along with others. Those are good children. And that is what we, as a society of parents, have been raised to expect from our children. Anything outside of those behaviours is outside the norm.

But what we forget is that there are many difficult adults. There are many adults who challenge everything they hear, who pick fights at the slightest provocation, who don’t follow the status quo. In fact, many of those adults are our heroes.

My child is my hero.

This child may not be easy to raise. This child may not ever give me one single break or help me in any way. But this child challenges me to be the best person I can be and to help the child channel those “weaknesses” into strengths

There is nothing that will ever fix this child. I will always be called into school meetings. It will always take two days to convince the child to spend a half hour tidying a messy bedroom. And I will always be challenged by the child’s behaviour.

Children like my difficult child require more. They require better parenting. They require more attention, vast amounts of structure, more time to complete tasks, high levels of tolerance and low levels of frustration. They require the adults around them to be the very best they can be.

It is easy to make excuses, to say that the child has a disorder or an illness and to throw your parental hands up in the air and tell yourself and the world that there is nothing you can do. But how does that serve the child? Or the parent?  Or society at large?

The only thing to do, when you have a child like mine, is to strive every single day to do better, to be better, and to eventually raise the child into a strong adult who may keep those “difficulties “ but use them in positive ways.

We are a society of quick fixes, instant solutions and expert opinions – but none of those apply to difficult children.  If they did we would be a society of “normal” automatons with no one challenging the status quo and no one seeking to change injustices.

I thank God every day – alongside cursing Him – for my difficult child. I give in every day to despair and frustration, but I also find at least one moment every day of soaring, incredible hope that this is a child who will grow into an adult who will make a difference.  This is a child who can literally change the world. It won’t be easy, just as raising the child isn’t easy, but this is not a child made for ease. This is a child made for change and growth and resilience.

I wouldn’t medicate or diet that away even if I could. I love my difficult child with a fierce love that accounts for all his difficulties and his promise and I pray that I do right by him. Some children are harder. Some children are almost impossible. But no child is without promise. And the more they cause us to struggle, the stronger their promise is.

And so I struggle. And I try. And sometimes I cry. Often I fail. But I will never give up on my difficult child, because I will never give up on the idea that challenge is what creates change. And I think we can all agree that the world needs lots of change.