We’ve tried everything on you, our guinea pig. First I read Babywise, aka Harsh Parenting 101. You were on a schedule for nursing. I would hold you in my arms and rock you, your mouth opening and closing like a fish, your whimpers getting increasingly impatient, until the time allotted had passed and the book said I could give you milk. For the first six weeks of your life, it was a battle between you and me… and I “won.” You were sleeping through the night, just like the book said, at six weeks old. I could leave you in your room, on the floor, in your crib or playpen, with a few small toys, from the day you were interested in them until you were nearly two. You would play, entertaining yourself, because “boredom develops creativity.”

By the time your sister came along, I didn’t even consider this style of parenting. She nursed when she wanted to, relentlessly, all night long, for almost a year. For her first six weeks, you tried to climb into my lap every time I nursed her during the day, and I would push you away or go into another room. I had to be hard on you, I told myself, because your behavior would be the model that they would follow.

I was a different parent with you, my first, than I would ever be with her, or with the baby sister who came two years later.

I am a different parent with you, my first, than I am with them.

I expect more from you because you have to set the precedent. I test theories out on you. Naughty step? She’s not too young. (Months later, still unable to sit still for more than a few seconds, I would grab you up from your dash, place you right back on the step, and start the timer all over again. Battle two. Isabella: 1. Mama: 0.) Bilingual charter school? Let’s try it! Even if the kindergarten teacher doesn’t actually speak Spanish, the kids are running around the hallways like banshees, and the second grade teacher gets fired for poor classroom management at the end of a year where you got in trouble enough times to make me think you might have ADHD (the survey from the doctor sat on the floor of my car for months until I realized it was not you… it was the environment).

And now, the dreaded age. Middle school. A year ago, we were right back where we started in kindergarten, hemming and hawing about the best choice for you. My guinea pig, my eldest daughter just wanted to walk three blocks to the mediocre neighborhood school. I wouldn’t listen. I wanted to set a precedent, a level of expectations that your sisters could shadow. So the militaristic charter school it was, where you learn to never forget your pencil, to charge your computer, or not to speak one word in the hallway, for fear of an hour-long detention after school.

So it is no wonder, after a lifetime of me making decisions for you, that when you don’t get what you want, you pester and beg. You tease your sisters, mock their kindness, flaunt your gifts in front of them to incite jealousy. You pitch fits, ignore our instructions, storm out of the room, throw folded laundry down the basement steps, and slam your bedroom door. You stay up all night playing on your phone, begrudgingly tread through specified activities the next day, and have teary-eyed breakdowns over which seat you’ll sit in in the new car, over who lost your colored pencils, over what we’re having for dinner. You tell lies to avoid your parents’ wrath.

You remind me every day how much I’ve failed you. How Harsh Parenting 101 will never work. How you need hugs and hand holds, not criticisms and impossible expectations. How your sisters will never have the same parents, because they are not the first born. We are softer around the edges with them, our patience worn thin, our will weakened after all the battles with you.

These are the words I don’t hold out to you on my blog. I don’t watch tears well up in your eyes at the kindness of my poem for you, acting like parenting is all about coos and cuteness. I keep them here for the world to see and for me to remember:

1. You are not a guinea pig.
2. I am not a scientist.
3. Parenting is hard.
4. Despite everything, I love you more than anything. Till my heart bursts. Till I lose my mind and you have to fight your way back to it. All the way to the moon… and back.

5. Let’s get in a spaceship and make our way to the moon. And back.