What are the hardest years?

[isntlifeacrazyride]

As a parent of a 14 mo, I wonder what would you say are the hardest year(s) of raising a kiddo?

But we can only speak from our personal experiences, I genuinely had a really easy baby (& a DH who pulled his weight). I had plenty of lie ins, lots of nights away etc. I never ever experienced the 'can't even go to the toilet on your own' scenario. I had a baby/child who slept really well, happy to go to bed at 7pm - in his own room - from a very young age.

But get to the early teenage years and it was a challenge, although really nothing horrendous but certainly in my experience, those were the worse years. But as I said earlier in the thread, we got through it, at 21 he is a charming young man most of the time.

I'm a secondary school teacher and fully admit I haven't got a clue but I do think it looks v tough particularly with girls but I don't know why that is. I'd say it's all v wearing especially going from the enthusiasm of little kids, it looks tricky.
It kindof gets me down tbh though as two of mine didn't sleep for years and I had one extremely difficult toddler from 1 to 4 with endless screaming tantrums a day and night and it was unbelievably difficult so when ppl say it gets harder i do feel a bit shit tbh... My boys are getting older now and having sleep has dramatically improved my life.
Tbh all of my friends are having their first now as we were younger having kids and I found 0-1 a walk in the park and one child soooo easy, my toddlers slept worse than my newborns but I don't tell them this as who wants to hear it like. But I sooo get that kids are a v v v different kettle of fish for teachers than parents and I cringed so much at these laughy memes from teachers during lockdown re "parents do you think teaching is easy now " as if they were proving something. Nope I'm fine with teaching a class of 25 teenagers , it's obviously totally different with your dcs...