we are both poorer parents to DD than to my son, which is a hard thing to admit, but which clarifies things a little, IMO. I mostly feel that I am a good parent to my son, who has an easier temperament (though he is not "easy"). I screw up occasionally, of course, but to me it seems like it's totally within normal limits, and I do not get down on myself about my parenting when it comes to him. I--we--screw up much more with DD. The patterns we've developed are problematic. It's not that I think we are inclined to be bad parents generally, but she is challenging and we run out of strategies and just get burned out.
I hear you.
At one point I took a parenting class because I really thought that DS's behavior was somehow a result of my bad parenting. Nothing in the class worked at all: over the 10 weeks it became clear to me that normal strategies were not working, which also clarified that we needed something else. Of course, it was a class for parenting typical kids, and DS's neurology was working against us, but I didn't know that yet.
Extraordinary kids require parenting off the map. I don't think you should feel badly about being burned out, or about not being able to give enough. You'll do all you can, I'm sure.
DeeDee
