Your Challenging Child Is An Opportunity

Any mother will tell you that every child can be challenging. Some mothers, however, understand that certain children are a little (see: A LOT) extra with their challenge. I finally felt seen as a mom to a challenging child when I sat in a break-out session at a Christian women’s conference with a well-known homeschool author and speaker, Rachael Carman. She was presenting on raising what she calls “THAT” child. I sat in the back and cried the entire session because I not only felt certain that I had one, but I was guilt-ridden over how I had reacted to him. As the years have gone by, I have come to see that my challenging child is an opportunity not a problem.

Twice As Nice?

My first pregnancy was pretty great. I had nausea, but I found it exciting because it was my first baby and wasn’t too severe. I worked as a school social worker for most of the pregnancy, and I nested at home for the last few months. In addition, we had plenty of privacy in our apartment, supportive friends, and a wonderful church family.

My second time up to bat was not as idyllic. My husband and I were new house parents at a boys home. We were in an apartment inside the boys’ house, and privacy was all but non-existent. I remember laying in bed at night and able to hear every word the guests sleeping in the room above said. I was getting a taste of the “fishbowl” living I would do as a pastor’s wife in the future.

Sick And Sleepy

I was the most nauseated I would ever be in that second pregnancy. Every smell made me run to the nearest restroom. And I lived in a house filled with teenage boys, often doing outdoor work! I still cannot say how I was ever able to leave the bathroom.

My doctor told me to take vitamin B and sleeping pills. Half a sleeping pill made me groggy twenty-four hours a day. I slept every chance I had, and my nausea burdened my husband with a great deal of the childcare while he was also completing his duties as a house parent. All in all, it was a rough nine months.

A Challenging Birth For A Challenging Child

My doctor recommended that I be induced with my second child because my first had a Group B infection at birth, and we were expecting a huge snowstorm near my due date. I lived in the woods…like, take a snow mobile to the road and meet up with the ambulance kind of “in the woods.” So, I packed a bag and headed to the hospital. This labor and delivery experience was the stuff of nightmares.

I had an extreme reaction to the medication the hospital gave me to induce labor. It felt like the pain-o-meter was at an 11 any time someone touched me. I gratefully accepted the epidural, but my anesthesiologist (the only one in the whole hospital) was inept at best and plain old mean at worst. He was frustrated when I had contractions, and poked me with a needle over and over while the hospital staff fearfully watched his anxiety grow. Each attempt he made was unsuccessful. His idea of helping me get through this procedure was yelling, “Make a C!” I’d like to see him make a C with a basketball in his lap…

In the end, the epidural never worked. However, it did give me a spinal headache that resulted in an epidural blood patch days later. So, he gave me narcotics which wore off in twenty minutes and caused me to violently vomit for hours after delivery.  

But my baby was healthy and in my arms. God is good! I knew the hard parts of being this baby’s mother were over. Ha!

Snapshot Of My Challenging Child

My son has gone through phases. Some are much easier than others. His first year of life was a breeze. We attached well, and he was such an easy baby. The transition to a family of four was amazing, and we did (and still do) adore him.

Then, the head banging started. He would sit in his crib and loudly bang his head for hours. He wasn’t causing any damage, was developmentally on or ahead of schedule, but his hair was rubbing off in one spot. Also, we just wanted to sleep!

As he got older, he grew much more intense than I was ready to handle. While I was pregnant with our third baby, he threw epic tantrums which often included kicking and hitting my stomach and screaming inches from my face. I was infuriated. All I could do was hold him tightly in my arms to prevent either of us from getting hurt. We spent many afternoons together sitting on the floor while I wrestled him in my arms, both of us crying.

He also started stuttering and that made him angry, too. Thankfully, that resolved itself quickly. My son had a lot to say, but he couldn’t form all the words as rapidly as he thought them. We worked on slowing him down, and he found communication a whole lot less stressful.

The Challenges Have Changed

My son is nothing like his toddler and preschool years. Good thing, I’d say, because he’s ten now. He’s still a challenging child, though. He requires a separate explanation for everything. He obeys, but he needs to know everything about why. This is sometimes a form of disobedience (e.g., stalling, arguing), but most of the time he is genuinely interested and gets distracted by his interest.

My second child is an idea man. He has big ideas and a big personality to go along with them. These ideas, however, are not always good ideas. You know what I mean, moms? A more thoughtful child would think…at all…about the idea before implementation. On the other hand, my son has a heaping helping of impulsivity to go along with those big ideas. This killer combo leads to broken toys, windows, and furniture. Sometimes, it leads to really hurting his siblings. And of course, he’s almost always the one who gets caught when multiple children are in the wrong because he does whatever it may be the loudest.

Do you know the kind of enthusiasm that children have on Christmas morning? I sit in my robe, drinking coffee, and smiling as my kids take over the living room in a swarm of positive and overwhelming energy. But my son has that energy every morning until hours after bedtime. He loves life, has plans he wants to execute, and he is going to announce it from the mountaintops (at least, it’ll be loud enough to do that).

It Was A Huge Mistake

While I was pregnant in his toddler/preschool years I thought I had made a mistake having children. I held my enormous belly at night and wondered why we would dare have another baby. I doubted my ability to be a mom, felt unsure about every decision I made, and I had reached the end of my own strength. That was the key!

I was at the end of my own strength, but God had all I needed. It appears that I had neglected to utilize that little nugget of information… Ugh! So typical of me!

Why Do I Think I Get To Tell You Anything About Parenting?

Let me be real with you. Recently, someone online called me arrogant. The word arrogant means “having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities.” That’s not me.

I have failed time and again to follow God’s instructions. Did I try to go it alone with my challenging child because I thought I was already good? No. I thought it was my fault my son was difficult and tried to fix it.

Am I arrogant because I write a blog and share (very strong) beliefs, opinions, lessons learned, and interpretations of the Bible with Christian women? No. I’m asking women to learn from my failures. Why keep what I have learned to myself? Why not encourage other women who might be struggling in the same areas I have struggled?

So, just know that the information I provide below comes from someone who embarrassingly had to learn these things the hard way through struggle, shame, and tears. This is not mothering tips from an ivory tower. It’s me, a sinner saved by grace, telling you what God has taught me.

Maybe I’ve messed up too much as a mom to be a valid source of information, but I think none of us have done this mom gig perfectly. Let’s help each other out, eh?

Opportunities With A Challenging Child

I spent a few years mostly focused on the negative aspect of raising a child I found challenging. And I won’t sugarcoat it. There are negative aspects to it, especially when the mother is Type A, task-oriented, and rigid in her day-to-day life. After realizing I needed to relent and stop fighting God’s will in my parenting, I discovered opportunities I had missed in the early days of motherhood.

1. I have the privilege of guiding my challenging child into adulthood.

I had a choice. He and I could fight for eighteen years while I try to shut down who he was, or I could nurture his positive qualities. Spoiler: Many of the things I find challenging about him are positive attributes!

My son has a willingness to serve, and he has energy in abundance. With no guidance or parental training, that energy and imagination is squandered on selfishness. Meanwhile, some encouragement can help him find ways to tap into strengths for others and for personal development.

2. I help my challenging child discover and identify with his positive traits.

Bad traits and habits inhabit every individual. Constantly harping on those can result in a child that identifies solely in terms of the negative. After receiving repeated correction, my son slides into thinking he is the summation of all his flaws and rough edges. I, as his mom, get to remind him that he is so much more. In order to do that, however, I need to see beyond what challenges me and focus on what makes him the son I love so much. No to mention, what does God say about him? A whole lot, actually. I listed just a few below.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

Genesis 1:27

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

2 Corinthians 5:17

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Ephesians 2:10

My son is a believer whose identity is in Christ. What a blessing it is to be his mother and have the opportunity to teach him what that means (Proverbs 22:6; Deuteronomy 6:7). I have the great honor of walking alongside him as he grows into his own person.

3. Raising a challenging child is a chance for me to grow.

Children, especially those who challenge us, are like a mirror which reflects our own shortcomings and sin issues. I’ve always been patient and kind, so there hasn’t been much to reflect back at me.

Anyone buying this?

Although I did believe I was a patient person, my second-born made it clear to me just how impatient I am. He has tested me to my limits and beyond over these last ten years. I’d like to say I have since perfected this area of my life, but I’m not looking to add liar to my list of defining characteristics. My patience has improved significantly, but my son is still helping me smooth out those edges.

The fruit of the Spirit is listed in Galatians: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (5:22-23). Every Christian ought to display these characteristics, but did you know you’ll need to grow in those areas? If you didn’t, have no fears. A challenging child will make a mother’s need for growth in these areas much more apparent. It’s easy to think you don’t struggle with these qualities when they are not challenged. Add a challenging child to the mix, and you have a recipe for spiritual growth…if you’ll accept that opportunity.

4. My challenging child has helped me lower my expectations for those around me.

An embarrassing fact about me is that I expect a lot. I believe people are capable of much more than is required of them. However high my expectations of others may be, those I have for myself are even higher. You might be wondering if I meet my own expectations.

Rarely. I rarely meet them. I continue to expect those around me, though, to reach what I consider attainable expectations. My children, of course, are no exception.

My first-born is naturally a people pleaser. She has always been much more apt to obey without question the first time and not require the direction to be repeated a bajillion times. Again, my challenging child entered our family with his own unique personality. Imagine my surprise when I realized that my son needed more training, correcting, and opportunities to approach our daily life his way than my daughter.

I really struggled with why he couldn’t just get into line and do what I said. Why is everything an argument this week? Why can’t he just get that task completed? Doesn’t he understand that I am doing what’s best for him?

*insert record player coming to a screeching halt*

I Am A Challenging Child

Why don’t I just get in line and do everything God tell me to do? How come I go through seasons of arguing with the Lord’s will for me? Why can’t I just complete the simple, yet undesirable, task God has given me? Don’t I understand that God knows what is best for my life?

As I struggle with my challenging child, the picture gets clearer. I am a challenging child, too. Oh, the Lord isn’t struggling with me because He’s perfect, but sometimes I behave like a challenging child. And I have expected my children to exemplify obedience that I, myself, cannot consistently accomplish.

Have I done the same to other family and friends? Yes, I fear that I have. I’m so sorry that I have held people to impossible standards, myself included. I’m also filled with thankfulness because that challenging child has blessed me with a valuable lesson about a blind spot in my relationships with others. He’s helped me be a better mother, wife, and friend. My son has blessed me with insight I lacked for many years.

Final Thought

Motherhood has been a tremendous blessing in my life, but I have admittedly taken numerous missteps along the way. Some parts come naturally to me, but there have been plenty of aspects to biblical parenting that I have stumbled through and learned along the way. I wasn’t raised in a home filled with love for Jesus or biblical standards, and that means I don’t have a roadmap to Christian parenting that was handed down to me from my parents. I’m learning as I go.

But as always, God is so good to me. I have the Bible which instructs me, a solid Bible preaching church, and amazing Christian women in my life from all kinds of backgrounds to share their wisdom. I hope that you do, too. If you take one thing away from this post, please consider reframing how you view your challenging child. Like all children, he’s a blessing, but he is also an opportunity for you to grow and to guide someone amazing into adulthood. Who knows what plans God has for him, and you get to be there from the beginning! So, take a deep breath and jump in with both feet. It’s going to be a wild ride.

What tips do you have for raising a challenging child?

Image courtesy of Allen Taylor via Unsplash.