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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Everything, obviously.

Jokes aside, a big part of this is luck.  I know several families of 3-4 kids where 2-3 grown up kids are well adjusted but one is not.  And that one was different from early on - spirited, sensitive, whatever you call it  Some had some diagnosis and therapy, some didn’t.  Doesn’t matter - some people just can’t deal with life like most other people do.  [/quote]

The key (IMO) is to realize there is something different and get your kid the interventions/therapy/tutoring/etc they need as early as possible.  Basically get the interventions necessary to help your kid become "the best them they can be".

If you ignore the issues, they get worse and many times chances the kid's personality and makes it harder to help them later.  [/quote]

As a parent to a SN and NT child, this is important advice.

I think it's a good thing that a lot of people on here have the common sense to be humble and admit part of it just how the kid was born. OP, your first post trying to quantify is basically a litmus test for parents who are out to lunch. If anyone thinks that their kid turned out well all because of their outstanding parenting that is likely a red flag. Yes, parenting matters, but every single involved, caring parent who really strives to do the right thing and puts in the effort daily has had some struggles with at least one kid and has a big question mark about how that kid will turn out. It's our duty to truly do the best we can and not use the "I tried my best" as empty words, but there are so many other factors.

How are you defining " successful" and "well adjusted?" Do you understand those are not always static? The partner in a law firm finds out her husband is having an affair and becomes depressed and cannot perform at work. Her kids start struggling in school because they cannot handle all the upheaval at home. She gets therapy, takes meds and then finds out her husband is trying to get spousal support and full custody of the kids and things start to spiral and she needs to take a medical leave from work and can barely get out of bed. Is this the result of bad parenting she received as a kid? Is she still a success and well adjusted according to you? Should you judge her at all when she didn't set this into motion?

A guy gets his ivy degree, was a top athlete has a great job and is well liked. The company he works for gets taken over and eventually his job is eliminated. He's middle age and it's hard to be on the job market at his age. His spendy wife does not want to stop spending and the debt accumulates. They have marital problems. His in-laws and parents have various medical emergencies that require trips to visit and lead to arguments with siblings over care and whether it's time for AL. The kids start to act out at school. He's now unemployed, headed for divorce, on the verge of estrangement from his siblings and his kids are having troubles. Is he still your definition of successful? He can barely function from all stress. Is he well-adjusted? Should we now look at his aging parents and blame them for the fact he is falling apart?[/quote]

Agreed!

Kid 1 was always "slower, just met most milestones right at the final time to be normal".  By age 2.5 realized they needed speech therapy, so started that and kept it up.  By 2nd grade, realized while they were "smart", they just were different and struggled with reading.  School said they were "on target", so we spent the $$$$$$$ and got the educational part of neuropsychological testing done.  Turns out they were really struggling with reading/processing.  So started them in intensive tutoring over the summer before 3rd.  That meant 2-3 days per week for the entire summer at $100 per session, with an amazing tutor (trained in Linda mood bell for processing disorders among other things), also learned kid had no executive functioning so tutor helped with that immensely.  Got the rest of the neuropsychological testing done a few months later and identified anxiety, again lack of EF and a few other things.  Got kid into 1-1 therapy and group social skills therapy and kept up the intensive tutoring (2 days/week during school year).  All this while kid continued their music/karate/baseball/basketball/etc.

But you know what---by MS they were done with the therapy and social skills and had a great MS experience from both the academic and social aspect.  Had we not done that, things likely would have fallen apart in MS and kid would have really hated/struggled more with school.

Kid kept tutoring up thru 10th grade, and afterwards just for classes that needed it.  They went directly to college 2K miles from home at a T100 school.  Had a rough first year adjustment to academics at college (largely because of the major they wanted, and had to realize that premed/PT was not the right path for them), once they found the right major they turned it around, graduated on time (with a 3.45 GPA ultimately, which was amazing given the first year in premed courses and what it did to the GPA even with some W's), started a job at great company 2 weeks after graduation and is doing well 4 years later.

so it worked out well for us.  But had we not had the $$$ to do private interventions, the school thought nothing was wrong (kid got A/Bs and was "on grade level" according to them).  I knew something was off.  They were diagnosed with ADHD in college, (which I likely knew they had all along but with all the interventions they didn't meet the official definitions).  Key was giving them the tools to learn to cope/manage their differences in life.

Now, we were lucky that they had relatively "minor" issues in the grand scheme, but the same applies to everyone.  Do what you can to make them the "best they can be".  If you don't intervene as a kid, you might have them living in your house and struggling with life as an adult.  So you want to try to turn that into something positive for everyone
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