The “Good” Child and the “Difficult” Child

This story is personal to me; it's just a little glimpse into my childhood.

In my family, I was the child who seemed fine. I was the child who tried to keep the peace, helped around the house, understood when my mom was tired, and learned not to ask for too much. I have three siblings, but I grew up with two of my brothers. My older sister was already out of the house, so for most of my childhood, it was my brothers and me. When I look back at my childhood now, I see two very different ways that my brothers and I responded to the same family environment. I became quiet, responsible, independent, and understanding. I learned to take care of things myself and not add more stress to my mom’s life. One of my brothers went in a very different direction. He struggled more, acted out more, needed more attention, and was often seen as the “problem child.” For a long time, I thought these were simply differences in personality. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized there was something deeper happening. We were both looking for love, attention, understanding, and reassurance. We just learned to ask for it in completely different ways.

The Child Who Seems Like They Don’t Need You

Sometimes, the child who seems the easiest to raise is the one we accidentally overlook. From my personal experience, I’ve learned that when a child is understanding, cooperative, independent, and always trying to keep the peace at home, it can be easy for a parent to assume they don’t need as much attention. You might think, “They’re okay. They understand.” So you focus your energy on the child who seems to need more help, more reassurance, or more attention. In my family, my brothers were often the ones who didn’t clean their rooms or clean up after themselves. I was usually the one who did it. During those years, my mom would tell me, “They’re boys. You’re the girl. One day you will have your own family, and you will have to take care of your husband and kids.” Looking back now, I wish my mom hadn’t treated us differently simply because they were boys and I was a girl.
My brothers would sometimes cause more problems or become more of a headache for my mom. When things weren’t done, she would get frustrated and yell. Whenever I knew my mom was going to come home and be upset about something, I would talk to my brothers. I’d ask them to clean or help me because I knew it wasn’t just my responsibility. But they didn’t. So I did everything myself before my mom even got home. At the time, I thought I was helping my family. I thought I was doing the right thing by keeping the peace. Looking back, there are things I wish I had done differently. I wish I had left their rooms alone sometimes. I wish I hadn’t done their laundry. I wish I had let them learn to take care of their own responsibilities. Because while I was helping my family, I was also learning how to carry things on my own. I became quieter. I accepted things instead of speaking up. I turned my feelings inward. I stopped asking for help. I learned to depend on myself. And because I was the child who seemed responsible, I don’t think anyone realized how much I was carrying. From the outside, I looked like I was doing just fine. But the truth is, I wasn’t always fine. I just knew how to hide it.

I Wasn’t Looking for a Reward

I remember telling my mom about things I had done around the house, hoping she would acknowledge them. She never really said thank you. Sometimes she would simply say, “This isn’t just my house.” And I understood what she meant. It wasn’t just her responsibility. It was our home too, and we all had responsibilities. But I wasn’t asking for an allowance. I was looking for a simple “thank you.” I wanted a smile. I wanted a hug. I wanted to feel like what I had done mattered. I wanted to see that my mom was happy when she came home from work and saw that I had helped.
Eventually, helping became less about wanting to help and more about something I was expected to do. It became a chore. It became something I had to finish if I wanted to go out with my friends. And slowly, I noticed myself becoming less happy about helping. I think if my mom had sometimes come home and simply asked me, “How are you doing?” I would have been happy. I realized this even more when I started helping other people. They would say thank you. They would tell me, “Go be a kid. Go play.” And I remember feeling noticed. But at the same time, I felt a sadness I couldn’t fully explain because that was something I had wanted at home. I didn’t need anything. I just wanted to feel like I was someone’s daughter. I wanted to feel noticed for who I was, not only for what I could do.
I know my mom had many things on her mind. I know she was tired and had her own struggles. I know she grew up with no parents and a lot of other things that are personal to share right now, so I don’t blame her for everything.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that parents are human too. They are learning as they go, and sometimes they repeat the things they were taught themselves. But I still needed that care. I didn’t want to ask for it. I was the kid who became the listener. I listened to my mom’s struggles and pain, but when I tried to share my own feelings, I felt like she couldn’t hear me. So eventually, I just shut down. I kept things to myself and learned to deal with them on my own.

My Brother

While I was becoming more independent and learning to keep everything inside, one of my brothers was going in a very different direction. He was the child who caused more problems. He was the child who got yelled at more. He was the child my mom worried about the most. But at the same time, he was also sometimes the child who received more attention and was spoiled more. But he didn’t necessarily get the kind of attention he needed. He got gifts, which may have made him happy temporarily, but he didn’t always get the connection he needed from both parents. His dad is no longer here, and I hope he is resting in peace. My mom did show him love, but I think the yelling affected him more than she realized. Maybe the yelling was her way of trying to show that she cared or trying to get him to listen, but he needed something different. He needed her not to call him names. He needed her to show him that she loved him even when he did something wrong. He needed her to say, “I believe in you.” He needed a hug. He needed patience. But because of the yelling my brother learned to respond by yelling back. This made things ten times worse.
My brother is now an adult who struggles with independence and responsibility. My mom sometimes wonders why he can’t change. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t think everything that happened in his life can be placed on one person or one family dynamic. But I do think the way we learn to communicate as children can follow us into adulthood. My brother learned that yelling was a way for him to express himself. He learned to fight back when he felt hurt or misunderstood. But I’ve also seen a different side of him. I’ve seen him cry in front of me. I’ve seen the hurt underneath the anger. And I realized that he doesn’t always feel safe enough to show that side of himself in front of everyone, especially our mom, because it always seemed to get dismissed.
I know this may sound like an attack on our mom, but I don’t mean it that way. I know that raising a child is not easy, and I understand that my mom did the best she knew how with what she had. I don’t blame her. I just feel sad for my brother because I think he needed patience and care growing up, just as I did, but we needed it in different ways. Children who are hard to deal with still need love. They need to hear that they are good enough, smart enough, and capable. If we keep saying, “That’s just how they are,” we may stop them from learning and growing. But yelling, shaming, or making them feel like they are the problem can hurt them too. A child can be corrected without being made to feel unloved. They can be held accountable while still being reminded that they are loved. They need to know that making mistakes doesn’t make them a bad child and that struggling doesn’t mean they aren’t capable.
When I was upset, I learned to become quiet. My brother learned to yell back. We were both expressing our emotions, but in very different ways. I learned to keep my feelings inside because I didn’t want to make things worse, while he learned to express his anger because that was how he knew how to respond when he felt hurt, frustrated, or misunderstood. We both needed to feel seen. We both needed someone to understand us. We both needed reassurance.

How I Learned to Cope

I leaned toward spirituality and found comfort in angels and people who had passed away. I tried to stay positive through the experiences I had.
As I got older, I found people who were willing to listen to me. I learned to talk about my feelings. I also went to school for wellness counselling, which helped me learn how to express my emotions. But even that wasn’t easy. Through that experience, I realized that I was holding onto a lot of pain. I had become so used to being the listener and handling things myself that I didn’t realize how much I was hurting. Learning how to express myself showed me that being strong doesn’t always mean handling everything alone. Because sometimes being strong means allowing yourself to be heard.
My brother on the other hand is still carrying a lot of his past, but he is coping with it in ways that aren’t helping him. He struggles with drinking and marijuana and other drugs that he got himself into. I just really hope that he is okay..
I have tried to help him. I let him stay at my place, but he decided he didn’t want to follow rules. I didn’t want him to beg for money outside, and I didn’t want him to be involved with people who do drugs. My mom has also tried to help him. She has bought him clothes and food, found him another place to stay, and made him sign papers for rehab. All he needed to do was show up, but he didn’t, so he lost that place. Now I don’t know if he is safe or if he’s sleeping on the streets. The thing is, we have tried to do everything we can to get him out of there to have him come back home. I know I don’t have much more control over this I hope that he will find his way and heal.

I shared this because this is something that is happening in my life right now and I wish I could go back and give both of us what we needed as children, because maybe his path would have looked different if he had more of a stable home.

If there’s anything I would like you to take from this, it’s that every child deserves to feel loved, valued, and heard. Children are different, and sometimes they respond to the same environment in very different ways. I think it’s important to listen to them, ask them how they are doing, and try to understand what may be underneath the way they behave.

Thank you all for reading.

Love,
Elena