Child Rearing – Difficult Child

I learned a lot about parenting tips through firsthand experience rearing three daughters. I probably learned the most with my difficult child, Shannon. I’ve written stories about my oldest and youngest daughters, so I decided it was time for me to introduce you to my middle daughter. I always referred to her as my “wild child.” Shannon marches to the beat of a different drummer. If you look up “free spirit” in the dictionary, you’ll find Shannon’s photo and biography beside the lexicon entry. Shannon wasn’t just difficult – she was also fearless. She wasn’t afraid of anything, which is a mother’s worst nightmare. I blame her for all my gray hair. Thank goodness for Miss Clairol!

Shannon is the middle child, with everything that entails. She was only a year old when her younger sister arrived, and since Melissa was born with a cleft palate, she took up a lot of my time. Shannon didn’t get the attention she deserved, although I did the best parenting I could.

Shannon was extremely hard-headed as a child. We used to say that her head was the hardest substance known to man. You couldn’t tell her anything! Once, when she was about four, we went fishing one day. There was an electric fence by the pond to keep the cows in, and we warned her not to touch the fence. We told her it would “bite” her. As soon as we got her out of the truck, I saw the wire jumping up and down, out of the corner of my eye. Shannon was standing next to it.

“Did you touch the wire after we told you not to?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. And it didn’t bite me!”

How was I to know the fence was turned off? I cite this as the reason she never fully believed us when we warned her about something.

When she was about five, she found the scissors and decided to play barber with her sister’s hair. She cut it to the scalp. At the time, we lived in a tiny speck on the map called K-ville. We started calling Shannon the Barber of K-ville, pronouncing it so that it would rhyme with the Barber of Seville.

She went through a stage when she was very into Barbie. She had numerous Barbie and Ken dolls, but they were all headless. We found the heads one day in a box under her bed. Whenever Johnny took a shower in the girls’ bathroom, he’d find a big pile of naked and headless Barbies and Kens in the bottom of the tub. He’d usually trip over this “Barbie orgy.”

Also, after taking a bath, Shannon would usually run naked through the house and perform a little jig for us. We referred to it as the “naked girl dance.” Thank goodness she quickly outgrew this phase!

When Shannon was a little older, she began to collect animals. She had a huge heart and love for all creatures and would try to befriend a snake as quickly as she would a kitten. One day she came home from school leading a scruffy dog by a rope.

“Mama, can I keep this dog? It followed me home.”

“The dog followed you home?” I asked.

“Uh-huh. It just kept following me.”

“Then why is there a rope around the dog’s neck?”

“That helped it follow me,” she explained solemnly.

Another critter incidence: One day I was sitting on the toilet, and Shannon came in with her hands behind her back.

“Mama, are there any poisonous snakes that are green?” she asked.

“No, at least not around here,” I explained.

“Good!!” With that, she swung her hand around and dangled a long green writhing serpent in my face. I was not amused.

Shannon has always been a real “people person.” When we’d go on vacation, she immediately befriended everyone she met, and they all knew her by name. Johnny and I became nameless entities, simply referred to as “Shannon’s mom” and “Shannon’s dad.” Oh, and speaking of vacation, before she learned to swim, she got away from her father once and ran to the pool at the condos. She jumped right in the deep end and sank straight to the bottom. If there hadn’t been a man nearby to dive down and retrieve her, she would have drowned.

When Shan got to be a pre-teen, she turned into a beautiful girl, and she knew it. She had enough self-confidence for ten people. A lot of girls hated her, so she had a hard time at school. She did make some good friends, however, largely through horses. She had always loved horses and had them when she was younger, but after her father and I divorced, the kids and I moved back to my hometown and we had a house in the suburbs. We couldn’t very well keep a horse in the back yard. Sometimes another girl at school would mention that she had a horse, but no one could ride it because it was too wild. Shannon would perk up and say that she could ride it. So the girl would invite Shannon over to work with the horse in question, and sure enough, Shannon would ride the sucker! She’s always had a way with animals, and as I’ve already mentioned, she was absolutely fearless.

When Shannon was twelve, her younger sister, Melissa, was very into gymnastics, and her older sister, Mandy, was busy with show choir and several high school clubs. I felt that Shannon needed something that was hers, so I saved up and bought her a horse for Christmas. Melissa decided she wanted to give up gymnastics for horseback riding, so we bought her a Welsh pony. We boarded the horses at a stable outside of town, and the girls rode the bus there every afternoon after school. They both became excellent riders.

By this time, I had remarried. The next year, we bought a place in the country, in the middle of nowhere. The girls had their horses right in their own back yard. We were surrounded by dirt roads and pastures, so they had plenty of places to ride. Sometimes Shan would pack a lunch and be gone all day on her paint mare.

When we first moved to our country house, we wondered where the septic tank was. We let Shan drive the jeep around the farm, and she found the tank for us. She backed over it and sank the jeep into it. She was very helpful.

As difficult as child rearing is with young children, parenting teenagers is a whole different ballgame. And I often think it’s even harder with girls. When Shannon was about fifteen, she began sneaking out at night to meet boys. Once she “blossomed,” boys from all over found her. They’d show up to see her, and Johnny would put them to work. They didn’t even mind working for free as long as they could look at Shan.

Shannon hated high school. She was smart, but her attention span was short. It got to the point where I had to physically force her to go, and I was a teacher at her high school! I’d make her get up and get dressed and put her in the car. The girls rode with me to school. Shannon would still manage to skip, however. When I went to my classroom, she’d sneak back outside, where a friend or boyfriend would pick her up. I was ready to pull my hair out, so I met with one of the guidance counselors for advice.

Counselor: Is there anything she’s interested in, besides boys, horses, and partying?

Me: Well, she says she wants to be a nurse one day.

Counselor: Let her take the GED and enroll in nursing school.

I didn’t like the idea of having a high school dropout! But I didn’t really see that I had much of a choice. She quit school and got a job. She soon met a guy named Joe, and they quickly became serious. At the age of eighteen, she married Joe and moved a hundred miles away. I was heartbroken.

She surprised me by taking the GED, and she passed with flying colors. She enrolled in a college near her new home, but things weren’t working out. Joe was very controlling. He didn’t want Shannon to go to school, or to go anywhere else, for that matter. He wanted her to stay home, cooking and cleaning. He forced her to drop out of nursing school, and he became abusive. She divorced him and moved back home.

Now she became really wild. She got a good job as a waitress in a bar, and she made excellent tips. She and a girlfriend rented a nice house in town, and they had parties all the time. I think some of the attendees might have brought drugs to some of the parties, and I know alcohol was involved. Sometimes they’d take off for the weekends to Jacksonville to check out the clubs there. A couple of times, I had to go get Shan out of jail for minor offenses. The funny thing was, she always made friends with her jailers. In fact, several wanted to date her after her release.

One summer I was fishing on the pier at Amelia Island, north of Jax, when I heard someone yelling, “Mama! Mom! Hey, Mama!” I didn’t pay much attention to it – there were tons of kids at the beach, along with numerous mothers. I did pay attention, however, when the cries changed to “Hey, Holle Abee!” That was me.

I looked in the direction of the call, and there was Shannon, standing shoulder-deep in the ocean. I was shocked to see her there, but I was even more shocked to see what surrounded her. Because I was up on the pier, I had a unique vantage point that she wasn’t privy to. She was surrounded by a huge school of stingrays! I told her to stand still and wait for the rays to pass. Of course, she paid no attention to my warnings. Luckily, she escaped without harm. I’ve decided that Shannon had a guardian angel.

At the age of 21, Shannon became re-acquainted with a childhood friend, Jade. They fell in love and got married. Jade’s a good guy, and he supported Shannon in her desire to finish nursing school. And finish she did, graduating at the top of her class! She immediately landed a job as a nurse.

Shannon is 28 now. She and Jade have two beautiful little girls, and last summer, they had a baby boy to complete their family. They live in a nice house, just up the street from me. Shannon works as a nurse in a pain management center, and her patients love her. I’m always running into them, and my heart fills with pride when they tell me what a wonderful, compassionate caregiver she is.

Shannon is also a great mother and a Christian. She loves spending time with her kids, whether at home, at church activities, at the park, or on overnight trips. Shan is also actively involved with both of the girls’ schools, often volunteering to read to the class and to take treats to the school. She also values extended family and loves getting together with her sisters and their families, her in-laws, and with Johnny and me. I’m so amazed that she has evolved into such a wonderful, responsible adult. You won’t believe the number of prayers I’ve uttered concerning her!

If you can relate to what child rearing is like with a very difficult child, take heart. You’re certainly not alone! Child rearing is never easy, even with “normal” kids. Instructions on how to raise a child are not included with the little bundles of joy. Sometimes good parenting comes from trial-and error, and sometimes it comes from parenting tips from magazines, books, friends, family members, and professionals like guidance counselors. I think the parenting tips I got from school guidance counselors was excellent advice, even though I wasn’t so sure about it at the time.

I’m extremely grateful that my child rearing saga had a happy ending. Shan is a happy, productive, well adjusted adult now. I love hanging out with Shannon – she’s so much fun! She can even make a trip to the emergency room funny, as she actually did once. But that’s a story for another day.