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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]One kid is a dud and the other is successful.

I see this pattern repeated with many of my friends around the same age as me (68) who also have the standard 2 kids.

I can accept that I helped create the dud, though. Kid #1 was so easy for us; she was a natural rule follower and very responsible and independent from a young age. She also excelled academically (was an early reader & writer). Also, she was such a good sleeper from shortly after birth.

We were very much the "I don't know what these other parents are complaining about, this parenting thing is cake!" until #2 came along.

The second one was a fighter from straight out of the womb and always restless. He seemed (and still to this day) to never need sleep. He never me a rule he didn't want to try to break. He's very independent as well but not responsible at all. So strong-willed, though. He's very smart but hated school. He only wanted to study and learn about subjects that interested him. If he liked the class and teacher, he was a rockstar. If he didn't, he was probably going to get a D or F. Punishment also didn't work because no matter what was taken away or restricted, he would say things like "that's fine, my imagination is all I need" and he meant it. He got in a fight at school and we took away his gaming system and other electronics, which back then meant CD player. No biggie for him. He'd take a fresh spiral notebook and write a short story or draw.

Once our oldest was out of the house and away at college, we gave up more on #2. We were just exhausted from the constant fight. Nothing with him was ever easy and he was always pushing buttons. If he didn't do his homework or failed a test, that was that. We didn't hound him over and over to do the work and make him show us. We just let him fail.

He didn't get into any colleges (no big shocker there) and decided to do NVCC. We agreed to pay only if he passed his courses and actually attended. He never did. He dropped out after one year and has mainly just been working service industry type jobs ever since. He's 33 and lives like he's still 19. No long-term girlfriend or wife but he does have one kid that he rarely sees (we see her pretty often), he lives with roommates from the restaurant where he works and they're all younger than him by at least 10 years. He parties all the time and I very much doubt he has any kind of savings at all.

[/quote]

This sounds like ADHD.

To this PP - IF you had to do it over again... would you have stood over him more closely and done everything possibly to get his grades up, support him in college, etc.?  Do you have any regrets?  My DH believes that some kids will be duds if left to their own devices, but if you intervene to the point necessary (which could be a lot) at some point, they'll realize it's better to be successful, and start to see the light... what do you think?[/quote]

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