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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is the parent of the teens again. To give you some perspective, in ten years, you and your daughter will have a good laugh over these days. Your daughter will grow up into a lovely young lady. My 15-year-old son's behavior was so challenging (understatement of a lifetime), I genuinely thought he would grow up to be a criminal. Well he is the kindest, sweetest boy you could ever know.
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Not OP but I really, really appreciate this comment.

My DD has been very challenging since she was a toddler. We wound up having to consult a behavioral therapist about potty training because none of the regular methods worked and she was so adamantly opposed to the idea that I genuinely worried she wouldn't potty train by kindergarten (even with help, it was close -- she trained at 4).

I still remember one day during a session with the behavioral therapist, after she'd had a 30 minute session with DD, the therapist said to me, "some kids are just like this, they can be rewarding but they are so hard -- my son is in his 20s and I still tense up a bit when I see his name on the caller idea because he's just a lot." And I so wish she hadn't said that because while my kid is, yes, extraordinarily rewarding, this whole phase of life (toddler/preschool/early elementary) has been so much harder than I expected, and I think harder for us than it is for other parents. The idea that I'd still feel like "oh this is hard" in 20 years is horribly depressing.

But I sometimes get glimmers of what you are talking about, a kid who has the benefit of all the years of effort we put in PLUS all that determination and independence that makes that effort necessary, and I can see what a great person she will be down the road. And probably that therapist loves her son to bits and didn't mean what she said quite the way I took it, as the parent of a 3 yr old who had announced to me sternly that she would happily have accidents every day for the rest of her life if it meant not using the potty.

But yeah, some days it's just really hard and I am so tired.[/quote]

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