Reply to What age was the hardest to parent?

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[quote=Anonymous]There is no one answer to this. Kids are different, parents are different, circumstances are different. I see this in my own friend circle with people who have varying personalities, types of kids, numbers of kids, resources, etc.

I have one friend who would tell you hands down that kids get harder as they get older. Her three kids are teens. They are all really bright with strong, assertive personalities. Also, this family had a lot of resources for young kids (full time nanny plus both sets of grandparents nearby -- lots of support for the little kid years when they just need so much physical, direct help). So I get why it feels this way to my friend. Little kids have a lot of needs but they tend to be more direct, so it's more of a resource allocation problem. As they get older, the problems are more amorphous, and can't be resolved just with additional childcare resources. It becomes about communication, offering moral support, maintaining positive relationships, addressing larger scale issues with education or social concerns, shepherding them towards adulthood. With three kids who all have strong personalities, I can see how that is unquestionably more difficult than when she had little kids.

But I have just one kid and though she also has a strong personality, there are no siblings for her to be in conflict with. Parenting has gotten easier for us as she's gotten older. I'd say medium challenging from birth to age 9/10, then hardest from 10-12, and then it's gotten easier each consecutive year. Because as she gets independent there is just less for us to do and when she has issues we can just kind of take it one thing at a time and there is no balancing against the needs of other kids. I think I also struggled way more with her when she was younger than my friend struggled with her kids, for a variety of reasons. I didn't have a great support system, and I was always doing everything for the first time with an only (whereas my friend got better at parenting little kids with each successive kid).

So my friend and I would answer your question in basically diametrically different ways, and we're both right. We just have really different families and set ups (and are different people).[/quote]

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