Hi, DD is 9, adopted at 7 months. I would like to help her with her anxiety problems but I am at a bit of a loss about how to and where to start - I have looked at books to help kids in general deal with anxiety and then I have been rereading 'Twenty things adopted children wish their parents knew' which seems to focus more on therapeutic help such as helping them to grieve their loss and helping them to realise they have special needs arising from adoption.
DD doesn't have any diagnosis or anything. She manages well academically and has friends but I have always been aware of how anxious she gets underneath. Lately she has started verbalising to me how anxious she gets. Most of her anxiety is social. She doesn't cope well with groups or new people. Her teacher has told me she is very quiet in school and that there is a danger that children like her will get ignored by teachers. If she is a group situation she withdraws/closes down and the same with new people. We both work but have had to stagger our hours so that we can pick her up from school as she becomes highly distressed if we even casually mention her going to an after school club for a day or two a week.
She seems fearful of being wrong or shamed. She is very well behaved, too well behaved for a 9 year old. She apologises often even when she has done nothing wrong and someone is correcting her so they can help her. Last night I became irritable with her because she kept saying 'sorry' and she became very upset. She then apologised for saying sorry too much 
Bad mother .
She always thinks of others before herself e.g. if I ask her what she wants to do she will ask me what I want to do and will then worry that if she gets to choose then I will be unhappy.
Over the years she has had a myriad of fears, the current one being shop security alarms going off when we are leaving. This happened a few times over xmas and now she has developed a fear of shops as she is afraid the alarm will go off (even when we haven't bought anything!) and everyone will look at us.
In between all the above she is a happy girl with lots of interest but I am worried for her future as she lets her fears stop her doing things. I am particularly worried about the change to secondary school - bigger classes with strangers and strict teachers will make the transition very difficult for her.(Recently she changed her swim school and it took me 25 minutes to persuade her to get out of the car and into the building.)
A friend has recently said that she might be picking up her behaviour from me. I do worry about her but I am not socially phobic and I don't have excessive fears/phobias so I'm not sure if she is right.
Would a book on anxiety in kids be the way forward or should I be looking for a more adoption related book? Any similar experiences or advice would be very welcome
Here are some suggested organisations that offer expert advice on adoption.
Adoption
how can I help my anxious daughter?
foreva · 10/01/2013 13:42
Me again 
, there was a good thread on MN a while ago about being a natural introvert. It might be helpful to read this to see if your DD sounds like she is nsturally shy or whether it is something more that that.
Moomoomie, I have learned to be so much more patient than I used to be. I am trying to be even more patient but sometimes with the constant reassurance I just lose it
Hi OP,
Your DD sounds just like me at her age, and I was adopted as a baby too although I agree with others that she may just be naturally sensitive / more prone to worrying ... Don't discount the adoption as a factor though.
Her fear of making you unhappy, by doing/choosing something you might not like, particularly resonated with me. It's very common in adopters apparently. Guilt and gratitude (I've begun exploring this recently, encouraged by other MNetters). We are often made to feel grateful for being adopted, and we feel guilty if we don't ....or if we do something to upset our parents ....vicious circle! (I'm not suggesting that you make your daughter feel this way - you may already be well aware of this, and consciously not do it - but I know it's something that other people can invoke by ceaselessly chosen words such as "ooh aren't you lucky to have such a lovely mummy" etc).
I think you do sound like a lovely mum 
who is obviously well aware that there are many issues of grief and loss that can arise from adoption (I wish my parents had acknowledged this, rather than burying their heads in the sand, although this was 40 years ago and they may well have been completely unaware / not advised that such things could occur). As long as you are acknowledge your DD's feelings, I think you and she will ultimately be fine, I think.
I have this book about sensitive children at home - I have only read a couple of chapters so far but it seems pretty good and I think it was recommended to me by another MNetter - www.amazon.co.uk/Highly-Sensitive-Child-Children-Overwhelms/dp/0007163932/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357829673&sr=1-1&tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21 - might be useful for you?
Your DD may be terrified of being rejected, hence the constant need for reassurance. Or she might be playing you! - my DS, who is 8, is highly sensitive and he also completely melts down at the mention of after-school clubs etc. He genuinely doesn't like them but he definitely likes the feeling of power/control it gives him, so we are both working on it!
When DS' fears re school got too much for him I took him to see a fabulous lady called Andrea Lindsay who does hypnotherapy/NLP for kids - she got him to do positive reinforcement-type techniques and relaxation, and now he is able to talk about his worries and, crucially, to control them. Feel free to PM me for her details if you like (I don't have them to hand at the moment). She's based in Bournemouth.
I think the main thing is to listen to your DD's fears and never say "don't be so silly" or minimise her feelings in any way. Let her express her fears, acknowledge them, and then explain why/how those fears are unwarranted and how they can be managed .... I wish my mum had done this, rather than just glossing over everything and pretending it would go away. Could have saved my a fortune in therapy in my thirties!!
Happy to chat more if you like, and good luck x
Hi foreva
How would I have liked my parents to open the subject of grief/loss in adoption?
That's a very hard question to answer actually!! More so because my parents are dead now, so I don't have the opportunity to discuss it with them and to ask them how they were feeling about everything at the time it was going on. I'll brain dump here, if I may, in the hope that some of it may answer your question ...
My parents were very open about the fact that I was adopted, and they were lovely in their honesty about how much they had wanted a baby and how much they loved me from the moment they met me . Argh I'm welling up as I type this!! My mum was very good at being emotionally available to me so whenever I had questions I felt that I could ask her, and she was extremely frank in her answers. I honestly don't believe that she knew anything about the guilt/gratitude thing; I think in those days you were handed a baby and that was pretty much it. I know that she only had one day's notice that she was finally going to be a mum!!(after 8 years of trying for a baby and then registering for adoption, and my birth mother changing her mind for six weeks after I was born).
A a child I identified very strongly with my mum - I don't know if this was due to adoptee's gratitude or whether I was naturally empathetic. Or a combination of the two. I felt very strongly her sense of loss at not being able to have biological children, even though she never actually talked about it (it came more from what she didn't say, and from things my grandmother - her mum - used to tactlessly drunkenly accidentally let slip at family gatherings.
I also identified very strongly with my birth mother, whose name I knew (unusually for the time, when all adoptions were closed adoptions with no biological contact) as my mum told me the story of how I can to be adopted, and she always emphasised how much my birth mother loved me but was too young to be able to keep me with her.
What I've written so far suggests that actually there may have been too much honesty in my childhood! I'm not sure. I think there was too much honesty about the adults' feelings and nobody ever asked about my feelings. I remember crying on my 14th birthday and feeling a profound sense of loss for my birth mother. My mum just didn't know what to say or how to react. She was kind about it, but didn't offer any words of wisdom, and my dad was was never involved - I never felt comfortable discussing my adoption with him - I think I was afraid that he would get upset of angry although I had no evidence to suggest that this would happen.
OK, so having poured all that out, I can now answer your question! - I wish that my mum had asked me how I felt about being adopted, and that she (generally speaking, not just regarding adoption but everything) had acknowledged that all my feelings and emotions were valid, even if they were unreasonable/over-anxious/didn't correspond with how she was feeling, etc. Again, I know that part of that was down to the parenting style/fashion of the times, but I can't put it all down to that; my parents were very much of the "children will just fit into our lifestyle and we won't make any adjustments" school of parenting. I was often told "oh don't be so silly" when I expressed emotions that my mum didn't want/know how to deal with, which led (I think) to me being afraid of upsetting her. I am not suggesting that this is what you have done, however!!!!
So, I wish that the adoption conversations could have been two-way, instead of me asking all the questions and receiving all the answers; I wish that my mum had asked me questions, even at the risk of upsetting me, because it would have shown that she appreciated that my situation was not the norm. As it was, with no acknowledgement that I was entitled to feel differently from other children who were growing up in their birth families, I think I felt like a passenger, with no control over my own life.
Wow. That is the first time I have allowed myself to express any of that!!!
Just keep the channels of communication open, that's a good place to start.
I am off to read more of the Sensitive Child book tonight, following a long, tearful conversation with DS just now in which he insisted that everyone at school hates and him and nobody plays with him .....apparently he sat on his own for the whole playtime today ..... not sure whether he's telling the truth or over-dramatising! Bit tearful for him. Well, very tearful.
Kids do feel loss very keenly. He misses my mum, who died nearly 5 years ago but who was a huge presence in his life.
Urgh. Bit complex this parenting thing, isn't it...???!!!!! Magic wand needed! x
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