To throw adopted DS out?

Sorry my comment was in regard to all the people saying he was adopted at 1 and implying or stating that therefore there was no reason for adoption to be significant. I wasn’t commenting specifically re drug use. My earlier post said it might have been drug exposure before birth, or abuse or neglect affecting his behaviour, or it might not be, plenty of non-adopted lost young men using drugs as well. And I didn’t imply a direct link between parental or maternal drug use and drug use in adopted children, I don’t know the research in that field ie whether or not there might be a genetic element to propensity for addiction and/or whether foetal exposure might be associated with greater likelihood of later drug use. But all the behaviour might be linked to difficulties with emotional regulation associated with children whose neurological development was damaged early on.
I’m just trying to say that just because he can’t remember what happened to him (and something likely did for him to have been adopted in this era) doesn’t mean there weren’t any effects. I mean, few kids have been adopted this century in this country without there having been some adverse experiences at a key point in neurological development.

Id throw him out. Adopted or not.

Can you ask for help from social services, youth services? Could he go into supported living under a S20?

This is so true and our experience.

We adopted a 3 year old "with no issues". No issues? Ha bloody ha!

Either he just about held it together at nursery/school and then had massive meltdowns on the way home or the second we got through the door. Or he was fine at home and caused havoc at school.

Anxiety, low self esteem, not unstanding social cues, unable to make or keep peer relationships. It was a complete smorgasbord of emotional turmoil.

We asked for additional adoption support a number of times, but in the end we decided to pay for private support and he had counselling sessions at regular intervals from around 7 to about 18. It cost us an arm and a leg. I am glad we did, and he still talks about her. It gave him an outlet to say stuff he didn't feel he could say to us. We knew specific times of the year would trigger emotional fallout, so I was able to pre-book a series of sessions beforehand, and start them before he needed them.

When I approached SS again when he was about 14, as he was becoming difficult and I knew there was weed and other drugs involved, they were worse than useless.

Basically I feel that the state offloaded a child with obvious issues (obvious to them at the time but denied) on to us, and by doing that saved themselves 15 years of Foster Care costs and other costs as he would probably have got more support being in foster care.

I love him very much and I am glad he came into our lives, I couldn't imagine parenting any other child, but bloody hell, it's been tough at times.

Edited to say I also thought he was neuro divergent, but that was denied at school. Everything was hung on the hook of "attachment issues". At 20 he was finally diagnosed with autism and also put on the waiting list for and ADHD assessment - that was three years ago, still waiting

So on the one hand, school used attachment issues as a means of evading ASD or ADHD support, but at the same time SS were saying he didn't qualify for adoption support. We felt like we were between a rock and a hard place a lot of the time.

Not sure why people think being adopted is not relevant. Adopted children often have trauma and attachment disorders which significantly increase the chances of behavioural issues and addiction in the teen years - its very common unfortunately. And if the OP had missed this information out, people would have been asking about possible trauma etc

No the adoption is very relevant because her son needs some very specialised support from post adoption services.

Threads like this really irritate me with the notion that adoption is irrelevant by now from those who have little to no understanding of what the impact CAN be of simply being adopted.
for every story of how it is fine is a child who feels abandoned and attachment issues and they don’t belong.

it is an incredibly underfunded area for support and does tend to work on the notion that it will be fine and of course it isn’t for quite a few and the specialised support just isn’t there

Hes your son OP and the adoption should be irrelevant by now, but perhaps you regret it now because he is in a bad way and making your life terribly stressful. There will be helplines and support groups for the parents of addicts who might have good advice.

Look up externalising behaviours in PTSD

I would imagine he needs some serious therapy due to attachment trauma

Thing is the OP hasn't included any details about his birth parents and his life from conception to adoption life so all this is suppostiion. I am an ex drugs worker so I am reasonably aware of the risks for fetuses, babies and young children who are in a household where the parents and/or adults are using substances. The team i worked in included a specialist midwife. Obviously substance use and that includes alcohol and tobacco, can impact a developing fetus, but it won't make them biologically impelled to seek out drugs at an older age. . That tends to be the result of learned behaviour, seeing the adults around you using substaces as a means of coping with stress, for recreational pleasure or self medicating Equally growing up in that sort of enviroment can have the reverse effect. If you subscibe to the disease model you will disagree with me.

How are you to know how adopted children feel? Are you adopted? No? So don't be so narrow minded.

But that is the real crux of the issues with adoption he is both simultaneously her child and not her child

If you're not an adoptee, I don't think you'll know..

Nah.

It's irrelevant in this situation. He is either her child or he's not.

He's probably going through trauma, poor lad.

The reason why he was adopted is irrelevant and I guess that OP mentions her son was adopted because she is concerned re his fear of rejection which is common in people who have been adopted.
My son showed similar behaviour at that age and despite my love and care, there is no happy ending. Details spared

I am an adoptee and also a retired social worker of many years' practice and I think one of the biggest mistakes was to designate young people as adult at age 18. Neurological research indicated that their brains don't mature until around 25, and some are saying later still.
As social workers supporting chaotic younger mothers, our practice observation was that “something seems to happen around age 25”; this was years before the research confirmed it.

If a young person is having problems, throwing them out at that stage in their development is not likely to achieve good outcomes, no matter what their legal status is.
@Doobedobe 'Chucking kids out is basically handing them over to the people that are influencing them.

If they are adopted, they have a whole lot of other issues on top, which generally come to the fore in adolescence, regardless of how good the adoptive home is or what happy childhoods they have. These attachment and trauma issues have been well described in previous posts.
When I was on the Adoption Panel, I was always the one to ask the prospective adopters to think about how they might feel when their adolescent child told them to “fuck off, you're not my mother”, and all the rest of it, because at the time I don't think adoptive parents were well enough prepared.

I was angry, chaotic and awful throughout my teen years and into my twenties. Sex, drugs, rock and roll and a teen pregnancy and disastrous early marriage.
Then I matured and got my life sorted out, with my parents being the “lighthouse” and never giving up on me. But they were not prepared, as it was the blank slate and happily ever after scenario in those days.
They could really have done with adoption support and /or mutual support groups.

I think that more adoption support is needed overall.. but finance.

He was adopted when he was 1 so surely he hasn't known that lifestyle

This thread is a bit triggering and making me anxious. I may need to hide it for a bit 😕

Lots of pp have explained that the developing brain can be damaged before birth by drugs and/or in the first year or two of life by abuse and neglect. This damage is not at all easy to heal in many cases. Sadly.
If he’d been physically abused and his spine broken would you say he can’t have been affected by that and must be able to walk really because it happened when he was a baby?

He was a year old when he was adopted. He had no memory of his early childhood.

As I said he was my ex. I loved this man with all my heart. He most likely had deep seated emotional issues but he refused to acknowledge this and the one attempt his parents made to address this resulted in him "playing psychological games with the therapist" as he was "smarter" than her.

His parents were wealthy and adored him. He was never ever in trouble for anything he did. He hurt his mother his father, multiple women (serial cheat). He never faced any consequences and is now married to the young hot woman of his dreams.

I know his life wasn't perfect despite the money etc. He had a deep insecurity about being "different" but he would never admit or acknowledge anything was wrong. It was always everyone else fault. Even when he was abandoning me for a younger hotter woman it was "my fault". His parents backed him up everyone backed him up. Noone ever challenged or criticised him and he would fly into a rage if they did. Or start scheming about how to mess things up for them.

I grew up poor and disadvantagedj. Bullied at school, eating disorders etc. In contrast to mine his life was amazing. And still is. He has his dream girl, lovely house, plenty of money, whilst I'm alone and always worrying about bills.

Being thrown out by his parents would make OPs sons life very difficult. It could make or break him ie he would be forced to clean up his act OR he'd slip more and more into drugs and dysfunction. But my ex never got pulled up like this. His parents never threw him out even when he was screaming "fk you, you're not my mom" at his mother and trashing things. They just spent more and more money on him.

Anyway it doesn't matter. It's just the mention of an adopted teenage boy behaving like this reminded me of him. And yes I am bitter about what he did to me. But noone else sees it was wrong. Hell ...even you're defending him....and you don't even know him.

I know.

This is such an insightful post.

I met my birth mum and was amazed at how her hands were similar to mine, her mannerisms, her way of tilting her head.

And yes, absolutely, the genetic hook is a fundamental part of someone's identity. It's proving that my personality has been shaped a lot in part by my birth mum and her similar traits, being anxious and I am certain she was predisposed to it by trauma she went through as a child when she was abused by her father. He haf links to the Kray brothers in the East End, and I think it deeply affected her. They were regulars at the home apparently 😕

It most likely affected her drug taking too, which of course made me premature and most definitely affected my development, genetic disposition, and undiagnosed ADHD.

It's all connected.

Sorry for the mini life story lol 😆 😅

Jesus, that's a stretch why assume his parents were into drugs. He was one when he was adopted so he's hardly going to remember a drug infested home even if there was one.