DD (adopted) is away for the weekend with one of the groups she goes to. That leaves me, DH and DS1 and DS2 at home. The boys are both our birth children, aged 3 and 8 months.

While I love her desperately, she can be hard work and the emotional strain of caring for her is sometimes very wearing. She has had several weekends away over the past year (Brownie pack hols, school trips, etc) which feel like respite to a certain extent, even just for the few days she's not at home. But they also make me think and sometimes make me feel a bit sad/weird (can't quite describe it) and I do a lot of 'what if...' thinking.

DH and I are noticeably more relaxed and more able to be attentive to the boys and have fun. Sometimes I imagine that this is how life could've been if we had not adopted our DD first. We could've had a normal life... Does that make me just the worst person in the world...?!

I've had a lovely weekend, and although it will be good to have her home, I am now getting myself ready for DD's return tomorrow teatime. On the outside I look normal, inside I am ready to protect the emotional me. Does anyone else 'get' this...?

What you say seems quite understandable to me. You have a child presumably with some significant emotional needs from her previous experiences - from what I understand that's the rule not the exception for adopted children.

It is weird because of the fact that you knowingly take on this risk when you adopt, it's not quite the same as having a birth child with special needs, you are always tempted to think, did I make the right decision.

Are things bad enough to need help, or is it just the brief respite from a three-child busy life that's brought this on?

You are definitely not the worst person in the world! Don't go there!

i feel liek that about my biological ds1.
i think in any family you have easy kids and difficult kids.
hth and sorry you're finding it tough

The what ifs in life are what i find makes parenting a nightmare, i wish i could stop myself going there. So to here you are having a bad case of them, you must have alot on your plate, with the ages of your children. i have a birth ds 13 years and adopted dd 6 years, and feel like we operate as 2 families as what pleases one won,t please the other most of the time.
I do think the last post makes a really good point , i fall into the trap of thinking because she isnt born to us thats the cause , but in truth i suspect its just her being her, and me being me , if that makes any sense.
I hope things feel better this morning,and i always find there will be a new challenge around the corner, that puts this one to bed for a while, oh the joys of parenting!!

oops missed out a sorry there, should be 'so sorry to hear you are....'

I think talking through these feelings with someone outside your family may be helpful.

I'm adopted and grew up in a family with birth children and my mother had these issues.

I have a DD whom I love dearly but things are always much easier when she isn’t around. Girls can be quite complex and have different needs to boys.
For example: My boys are happy to go with the flow, my DD will only "go with the flow" if she thinks it is to her benefit. She also wants to talk all the time. So snuggling up to watch a film with the boys turns into a nightmare if DD is there. IYSWIM!

Personally I found having younger children so much easier in terms of you set the agenda but as they get older their wants and desires play a much bigger role in planning anything.

You also have a deal with different age ranges which could be potentially problematic. Getting a balance isn't always easy.

Also bear in mind that the mother/daughter relationship is very different to a mother/son one. I don't know why and I can't articulate the difference - but I have 3 sons, and 1 daughter and my relationship with my DD has at times been very difficult, and is certainly different. We're very close, and I love her so much, but no-one else in the world has ever made me as angry or upset as she can; she knows exactly which buttons to push.

What I'm trying to say is don't assume it's about the adoption - you could just as easily be feeling this way if she was your biological DD. Lots of parents struggle with their relationship with a particular child - but you will get there in the end.

Does your DD have attachment issues/disorder? Because I soooo totally get what you're saying and understand how much easier/calmer life is when that child isn't around to throw wedges into everything and try to exert their control. It is completely different to just having easier/more difficult children or just girl/boy differences and unless someone lives it, they really don't understand. Life isn't normal.

My DS2-11 (stepson with RAD) is currently staying with his grandmother, and we are actually experiencing what normal life is with our other three. We are pretty shellshocked by the last several years and it wasn't normalcy by any stretch. Life is very different with him not here.

Hope your respite helped.

So far DS is too young to know what issues we may have in future and with no other children I don't have a reference of "if I had stopped at two what if..." to compare life to. It was DS or no family so I'm lucky in a way that whatever problems he may have, I still see having him as a better life for me than not having him.

The thing is - you don't know that "We could've had a normal life... " you don't know how either of your boys will turn out (or even how she will turn out in the end). My sister gave my mum a terrible time for much of her childhood ( I dread to think what she would have been like if she had problmes related to family breakdown!) but once she found her forte (she became a nurse) she blossomed and is a lovely energetic, vibrant caring woman with a great relationship with my mum.

I had a long chat with the medical advisor of our panel around matching time and she dealt with children with behavioural difficulties and her views were very interesting. She said that often children who had behavioural problems often became either sinificantly more successful than the "norm" or significantly less (successful meaning happy settled etc) as they often brought a huge amount of energy of focus to tasks if you could find what worked for them. (I know this is oversimplifying but was certianly true of my sister).

Being sad about the difficulties you face with your DD and finding it hard work is pefectly normal and doesn't make you a bad parent at all. Alhtough the issues surrounding her adoption may be the cause of her problems, many people get dealt a hand that they would prefer not to have and no doubt have just as hard a time reconciling their life as it is with what they thought it might have been.

How much post adoption support do you get? Have you worked with an organisation called family futures? www.familyfutures.co.uk/services/index.html my social worker has been very impressed with some of the work they have been doing.

Treating weekends away as "respite" seems a good thing to me and not something to beat yourself up about. And at 9 is no doubt some repsite for her getting away from baby and toddler stuff!

Bythe sea - family futures might be something that interests you too but as a step child I think you may to pay for their service - still it isn;t too costly compared to some I think.

Kewcumber - many thanks for the advice. I agree that Family Futures is a wonderful organisation. After a lot of fighting for services, our local health authority and CAMHS funded us for a comprehensive phase I assessement there, which confirmed what we already knew about DS2 and also confirmed that DS1-12 has some issues as well. They very strongly recommended we be funded for intensive therapy and an even more comprehensive phase II assessment. Unfortunately, many months have passed with our local authority refusing to move on the funding (and it is very expensive). DS2-11 is now staying with his grandmother, which is another story completely, but I needed to keep the rest of the family safe and he is much better getting the one-to-one care that he needs there.

I wasn't tryong to teach my grandmother to suck eggs bythesea! Its just that my social worker mentioned thedm to me on Firday so it was fresh in my mind...

No offense taken Kewcumber -- I agree with your social worker and really think Family Futures are great. They actually understand the situation, unlike the years of professionals we went through at CAMHS.

apparently they're in the process of being approved as an adoption agency to be able to do home studies but in a very different way to everyone else. not sure how it will owrk but apparently includes proper and predetermined follow up up/therapy etc

Thanks for your thoughts. We had a nice weekend all told, just that for me it was a thoughtful one, and that can generally tip inot feelings of guilt and anxiety.

I do view the times without DD as respite, especially when she's off having a ball with her pals - it's not like I shipped her off to brat camp or anything! It's just that DH and I both voiced this weekend how relaxed and different we both feel when she's away, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. We also choose to odd things when she's away because we know we won;t have to deal with the fall-out - this time we completely rearranged a room in our house which DD would normally have got quite funny about (asking endless questions, questioning why, etc).

It's interestng that someone mentioned the 'go with the flow' differences. We had a lovely 'go with the flow' weekend and just mooched about with the boys. DD asks all the time what are we doing now, what are when doing then, what are we doing tomorrow and the answer is never quite good/exciting/nice/'for her' enough, which I find both annoying and threatening and overwhelming too at times.

I am trying to stay with not feeling guilty, but I guess by admitting that I enjoyed the time without her, I am kind of saying that I don;t enjoy time spent with her..yada, yada...

In term of support, between going to court in Dec 2004 and last September we had no support at all - then I discovered by chance that we should have had a post adoption support worker, whom we now have and who is great. We have also been having some help from CAHMS - Our GP referred us, at our request.

I've been having some counselling with their psychotherapist since DS2 was born in January and that has definitely helped a lot - if only because it gets a lot of the stuff I was carrying round in my head, out of my head and I can leave it there. As a result home has become a happier place and relationship are less strained. We are next seeing this psychotherapist next Thursday (together on this occasion) so I want to use that space to talk a bit about how different things feel when we are apart from DD - not that it's a massive problem - it's just that things are noticeably different in how we feel and behave.

Haven't heard of family futures, but will read this with interest - thanks Kew. There is a service near us (we are in Bristol - called Thinking Allowed, which also offers family therapy type work. We are thinking of looking into them doing some life story work with DD in the coming year or so.

Kew, thanks also for your comments on the 'normal family life' issue. I know for me half of the problem is that I just don't know what is 'normal' and what might be caused by any adoption issues. My mum said she always looked forward to times when one of us was away as children (three girls, none adopted), because the family dynamic was different and life was not so stretched, so that has added a fresh perspective.

I am trying to work on just accepting stuff as it is right here right now, but I do have big fears for the future and particularly DD's adolescence. So many people tell us to expect the worst, but imagining what that 'worst' could be is such dangerous ground to tread...what if 'worst' is worse than I imagined??!! SO I try not to go there - it's too emotionally costly - but I also don't want to live in total denial of the likelihood of adoption and attachment issues.

Bythesea - DD hasn't been formally diagnosed with RAD or similar, but just from what we know about attachment problems, there are a few things going on for her (and why not, I guess, given her early life being a bit ropey and all...?)

Anyway, thanks for the support. It means a lot.

MPD, do you subscribe to the AdoptionUK magazine (Adoption Today)? That has loads of really informative articles and

I am at your agency's casual attitude to post adoption support and leaving you so ill informed and prepared!

IKWYM about fearing adolescence. I have had more than a few sleepless nights over that issue too.

We had a highly unusual assessment process for a child who was known to us (me, through work) already. Everything about our process was pretty irregular, and the knock-on effect of that is that we never gained any of the right support at the right time anyway.

I think we fell through the net because we didn't really ever have an agency who actually 'owned' us, if you like. Haven't seen or heard from our our previous/pre-adoptive support worker since court date in December 2004!!

Seems crazy to me now, and sometimes makes me feel a bit and as in the intervening period DH fell into a struggle with depression, I almost followed suit and we only got 'found' by post adoption support because I broke down in a seminar on birth /adoptive mixed families, run by our now Post-adoption worker who couldn't believe we weren't on her books!

Looking at it put like that, perhaps I should be more actually...?!

defintiely more but sadly not uncommon. I was surprised to learn that post adotpion depression is actually morecommon than post natal depression and really doesn;t seem to be focused on much by some LA/VA's. And yet I would have thought it is something that is essential for a good post adoption outcome.

Hopefully your meeting next week will give you some third party support.

One of the biggest shocks to my system in the early days of bonding with DS was that I wasn't ever entirely happy when I was withhim(feelings of overwhelming responsibilities got medown) and yet when I wasn;twith himIfeltguilty.

I felt like I would never be entirely happy again.

I don;t have a nine year old - but I can quite imagine that a break from a high energy, questionning 9 year old would feel like a break! My three year old is just beginning to assert his independence and I am already beginning to miss the easy going "go with the flow" toddler he has always been...

oh well kew, what do you expect? that's your side of the family coming out

I am with you on that one Kew...my DS1 turned three in July, six months after DS2 was born. I put his newly honed assertiveness down to post-baby attitude, but frankly my experience is that the so-called 'terrible' twos were a doddle, the more-genuinely-terrible-two-and-a-hlfs were much more challenging but the 'NO MUMMY, I'M TALKING TO YOU, NOW I'M REALLY CROSS AND ACTUALLY I'M THE BOSS'-threes are pretty damn hellish at times!! Where did may chilled out chappy go?! Thank the Lord on high he's still so pretty that I only have to look at him and my heart just melts!! Otherwise who knows the pickles we might have got ourselves into!

my terrible two's really weren;t too terrible at all but he turns three in Nov and has definteily entered the terrorising threes

Have had to completely rethink my parenting, much more boundaries and negotiating and no's and tantrums.

On the flipside he has taken to saying "I love you mummy" COuldn;t think where he was picking it up from as we are not a family given to spontaneous declarations of Love . Then realised its in the Rabbit and Rosies favorite things book we have been reading at bedtiem this week.

I have decided that pre-schoolers are edibly cute in order to stop their parents murdering them during the tantrums...

I know I'm coming a bit late to this discussion but I thought I would add my thoughts. I have 3 children, ds1 (adopted), dd (adopted) and ds2 (home-made by accident having been told we couldn't ever have children!). Throughout their childhood I have found that removing any one from the mix has left me with a really "easy" time, i.e. having two instead of three leaves me with "the two oldest", "the two youngest" or "the two boys". Any combination is so much easier than balancing the requirements of three, and the ease of each particular one being missing has varied over the years.

In particular, with dh and myself both available to only two children, we suddenly have one each, which by definition makes life so much easier.

Is it possible that you will find as your children get older that you will be glad to be without, say, the youngest, for a day so that you can do something more suitable to the two oldest?

Being glad that one is gone is a perfectly natural response from a parent of more than one child. It will be interesting to see whether in a few years time you will enjoy some mother/daughter time (coffee and hot chocolate in Starbucks, shopping for books or bikinis, etc.) and you will be glad to be without one or other (or both) of the two boys.

You will feel equally guilty then!

By the way kewcumber, I like your reasoning behind pre-schoolers being cute. Do you not think that is what is wrong with teenagers - my ds1 (aged 14) is not cute, which he really should be to make him at all bearable!

ah Mauryz - but my wise and ancient mother (who survived having three teenagers just about at the same time and currently has 5 of 6 grandchildren as teenagers) says teenagers are natures way of helping you let go of your children