Why Your "Easy" Kid Needs You More Than You Think

One of my kids was really challenging. The other one was pretty easy.

Have you ever thought that? You have one child who is sailing through life. Another child is struggling, or at the very least making YOU struggle.

Or perhaps your kids shifted back and forth, taking on one or the other role at any given time.

That’s pretty normal.

So what do we tend to do?

We work pretty hard to parent our challenging kid. They probably need a lot of attention—academically, socially, and emotionally. Perhaps they're distant, angry, anxious, underperforming in school, or engaging in risky behavior. Maybe they have a neuro-divergence that makes parenting even more confusing and challenging.

And then, of course, the easy kid is managing their life pretty well. So we can turn our energy to the kid who needs us the most.

That makes sense. We recognize each kid has different needs, and so we shift and pivot and give our kids what will serve them best.

I did all of that.

I had an easy kid and a hard kid.

My autistic daughter was challenging. No arguing that point. She was so hard to figure out. She required SO MUCH work from me as a mother, work to help her develop her delayed motor skills, work to get her to school each and every morning, full attention to help her complete her homework, mental and emotional acrobatics to figure out how to be her parent. It was exhausting and draining and perplexing. I had very little juice left for anybody else.

Her younger brother was easy. He advanced through all the developmental milestones like a champ. Where my daughter had been delayed, he soared.

He loved kindergarten so much that he wanted to go on the weekends. He was athletic. He was social. He sped through his school work with ease.

I spent a lot of time with my son. I really did. We had hour-long bedtime routines that involved books and MadLibs and sometimes giggles—complete with tears—we couldn’t shake. When he took up Little League in fourth grade, I took him to the park every single day for months to practice throwing a baseball. And then a football. Eventually he invited his friends, and I'd toss up the ball to hit so they could practice fielding. Or I'd toss a pitch toward "home plate" so the boys could take turns batting. All this with little to no practice or skills on my part. Just a desire to hang out with my son and give him the childhood I believed he deseerved.

And then I gave him all the love I could give a kid.

He was my easy kid. I wasn’t worried about him at all.

What I hadn’t taken into consideration for so many years was that having one “difficult” child makes things hard for everyone. Even the “easy” child.

Often the “easy” child SEEMS easy because they have decided or accepted that:

- Their needs don't matter

- Their needs can't possibly be met in their family

- It's their JOB to be the easy one, so they stuff everything down or make themselves small

- And/or they're gonna have to become "difficult" to make their needs known

And then:

- They find a (possibly) unhealthy source that meets their needs in some way

- They learn to put everyone else’s needs ahead of theirs

- They lose the ability to determine what their needs actually are

- They may become angry at the world and at you

- They may shrink themselves to avoid needing anything from you

- They rebel in order to get the attention they so desperately need, to say “Hey, I’m over here needing something from you!”

- Without a doubt, the connection between child and parents will falter

Does this sound familiar to you?

If you, like me, realize you’ve been thinking of your kids that way, chances are you really DO have an extra challenging kid. That’s super real!

And chances are your easy kid is feeling it, too. So what can we do to make sure our kids are actually getting what they need?

- Get CURIOUS

Yes! Get curious! You don't make assumptions and judgments. Rather, you wonder. And you consider. And you imagine. And you talk. And explore.

There's so much more, but curiosity is where it all starts. You get curious about what's going on with your kids--both the easy ones and the hard ones.

You can start your transformation right now—to less stressful parenting with your difficult child, to more empathy for all of your kids--and yourself!--and to a less guilt-ridden, less confusing, more satisfying parenting journey with ALL of your children, no matter what they need.

Even if your kids are grown, it's not too late to make a change.