She’s always done things her way, in her own time. Generally earlier than most kids too. She was walking at the same age, her younger siblings were just getting the hang of crawling. She spoke in complete sentences by 14 months old, where my other two were content to point, sign the words for more and milk and say quack at the ducks, at that age. People used to ask me if she was a dwarf. No, I’d say, she’s just advanced. Gifted. Special. Choose your pick of words and feel free to roll your eyes. I would too, if anyone else said it about their one year old child. Didn’t make it any less true though.

At two years old, we knew she had ADHD. It’s one of the many challenges facing us with her. One that we’ve learned to deal with pretty well in the last three years. There were a few years there where it was extremely hard, but we’ve come a long way. She’s come a long way. Some of that is age, some of it time, some the Adderall she takes every day. I don’t and won’t apologize for that.

The other major challenge in being her parent, is balancing her intelligence, with her…well I’ll call it social immaturity, maybe? I don’t know it that’s the right wording, but it’s what I’ll use. Not to say she isn’t a natural born leader, nor that she doesn’t have a ton of friends. Or even that she is lacking in social skills. Just that her intelligence makes it where she can understand things way beyond her age level, but she can’t really handle the knowledge. She has a high IQ. If I told you her IQ, you’d swear I was lying. Even people who know her are sure I’ve made it up. Mostly because only a handful of people will ever know someone with this high of an IQ. She can comprehend more than some adults. But she’s still eight and a half years old. Being able to handle change and being able to deal with the things she knows? Well it’s harder for her to deal with that, then it is for her five and a half year old sister.

My kid? She’s an enigma. She’s amazing. She’s special. She wants to be a Supreme Court Judge one day. If you ask her why a Supreme Court Judge, instead of a regular judge, she’ll tell you, well the Supreme Court Judge, always gets the final word. She’s sweet, loving and kind. She adores animals. She’s artistic and creative; writing stories that always delight me, because I love to hear what’s inside of her head. She’s smart, athletic, funny and extremely bossy. She likes things her way. She’s weird. She does math problems, that she creates herself, for fun. She can play Majong for hours, but can’t sit still in her chair for dinner. She’s an absolute joy. She’s also my hardest child. She’s never been what one would call easy. Never will be either. I can picture myself watching her one day spouse roll his eyes at her, saying what can I say, she’s just her.

She’s anxious about changes, always has been. She doesn’t like small changes, much less big ones. This is the kid, I had to give a run down of her entire day too, each day at breakfast, for the first seven years of her life. You will brush your teeth, find your shoes, we’ll go to school, you’ll read, eat lunch, blah, blah, blah. On and on and on. Just to make her feel more secure. Changing her cereal used to take two weeks to talk her into. We had to start talking about anything major weeks or months in advance, just to help her transition. It didn’t always help. We taught her relaxation techniques as a four year old, which helped in some ways. She still, at eight, wears days of the week underwears, just because it’s an order thing and it makes her happy. She’s a little OCD.

Out of my kids, she wasn’t the one I thought would be easy to deal with, in regards to the divorce. She’s taken it surprisingly well. Her sister became needy and stopped eating for weeks and was prone to crying at absolutely nothing for months. Her brother became needy and whiny and very tantrumy at everything. They both still sleep with me at least half the night when they are here. She became helpful and easy…or well easy-ish. She started doing more around the house, to help me. She told funny stories to cheer me and her sister up. She helped her dad with her siblings when with him. She read stories to Harrison, to entertain him in the car. She seemed to be fine. To be handling things okay.

Then a few weeks ago, the night before I left for my vacation, she had a major tantrum. The likes of which, I hadn’t seen since she was five years old. One that started in a parking lot and ended three hours later, after she’d screamed and then sobbed herself out. She threw things, she hit the wall, it was bad. It took me a long, long time to calm her down. At her dad’s house. The night before I left for vacation. Fun times. The next day, she told me on the phone, she didn’t know why she did it. I kinda figured that I did.

Since then, she’s been full of attitude. Back talking me. Whining non-stop at her dad. She’s mean to her sister and rude to just about everyone else. She’s crying at nothing and is prone to screaming fits, making me wonder if she’s suddenly become a 15 year old with raging PMS.

She’s stuffed her feelings. Five months of stuffing her feelings is now barely staying inside. She’s angry and sad and really, a big mess. Frankly it is worrying me to death. I’ve made an appointment for her to see someone this week. I’m also going to take her out of town this weekend, even though it’s her dad’s weekend. I think she needs some one on one time. Some time to talk. Some time to be. Maybe then, she’ll start to let some of those feelings out a  bit at a time, before they eat her up.

This is where parenting gets hard. Sure we all think it’s hard when they are babies and toddler. It is too, I’m not saying it’s not. But at the end of a day, when they are babies, if they were fed, changed, played with and loved, you did your job. Now? The feeding and loving and clothing comes a bit easier. It’s the making sure they are okay emotionally that is hard. Because there’s no easy answers now. A kiss on boo-boo’s, doesn’t work when your child is in emotional pain. God, I wish it did.

I just hope I’m doing the right thing. That I’m not too late. That I can help her deal with something that I still don’t understand for myself.