My 2 are very different too.
Oldest is a superstar achiever. 99th percentile on any standardized test, straight A’s, and every teacher she has ever had gushes about what a kind, bright, lovable kid she is. Her Achilles heel is meltdowns when she gets overly tired, and I have not been able to get her interested in sports, but otherwise she’s pretty much the perfect kid. As a parent I feel a lot of pressure not to fuck her up or do anything that might prevent her from reaching her potential, but mostly I’m just always proud.
#2 is a low achiever. For my part I feel like she’s very intelligent, but just a little quirky. She’s very articulate for her age, and she often picks up on things that only a kid with a high intellect would notice or understand. But she has zero motivation to perform, and she has a LOT of trouble staying on task. Carrot, stick, doesn’t matter, she doesn’t give a fuck. She recently scored in the 33rd percentile on reading and her teacher said she is regressing (teacher is a sweet kid but a dumbass so I take her opinion with a grain of salt). But then the next day we get an email that she performed well on the gifted and talented assessment. It feels like I fucked something up somewhere. I don’t have a career or any significant hobbies. I have poured everything I have into these kids and to see one not doing well is making feel like a failure or feel nihilistic. I anchor back to the fact that despite her quirks/struggles, she is an extremely thoughtful, kind, empathetic child, and is as adorable and lovable as Shirley temple, so it could be a LOT worse. But from time to time I’m tempted to just kind of give up and let her do what she’s going to do.
Parenting is hard.