Have you ever seen a brother and sister so different you’ve wondered aloud, “Did they come out of the same mother?”!!  Our two kids are like that.  Our firstborn, a boy, was a floppy baby, even as he was being delivered.  He was perfectly healthy, though he surprised us by coming 4 weeks early, but you could tell this was a pretty passive baby.  As he grew over the next few months, he smiled at everybody, and his eyes just watched everything.  You could tell he was laid back, taking it all in.  His laid back ways played out throughout his childhood and teen years.  Our second child, a girl, came out of the womb like a ball of fire.  And then she screamed for the next 10 months or so.  What a tightly wound, outgoing, ball of fire!  And to this day, she’s basically the same way.

Kids come pre-wired right out of the womb. It may seem obvious, but each child is preciously different from the next.  What that means is that our approach to parenting can be very different from child to child.  How we approach one child may have little or no effect on the next. This plays out in an infinite number of ways: with some kids, you can ask them to do something, some you just have to tell.  Others resent being told or asked anything.  My point is, take a look at how you’re teaching your child, how you’re interacting with your child.  What does he or she respond to? Are you aware of the adjustments you need to be making from one child to the next?  Is what you’re doing working?

Happy parenting!

Bob