Dad of 3 adopted children (1 birth child)

[needhelp1970]

..all have varying needs caused from early life trauma . 13 years in AMA

What ages were your children when they first came to you? What made you adopt the first and was it different reasons for the others? How does your birth child feel?

They were 1, 2 and 4
Adopted all 3 at the same time.
Our birth child was born after we adopted.

Do you feel scared of how they may present as teenagers? I'm an adoptee and so is my brother. I also work with a lot of adopted teenagers and their emotional needs are very very complex as you'll know!

In my own experience the teenage years are when being adopted really hits home. Do you feel prepared? I know there's very little support out there.

I'm living the teenage years right now and I can tell you they are unbelievably hard. Nature over nurture has won, they're now 18, 15 and 14 and socially making some horrendous decisions. We try to guide as much as we can but they are taking their own path. It's destroying our lives. We are shielding our youngest birth daughter as much as we can.

We are fighters and we can get any support we need , mainly though the ADF fund but also by jumping and shouting however the 18 year old bow seems to think he's 18 he can do anything but it's quite the opposite and he's creating himself loads of issues even with ur guidance which he just blatantly ignores. Almost everything we say will happen , happens to the detriment of them. However they don't learn from it and repeat the same mistakes . Their need for social fulfilment outweighs self preservation.

I can imagine. I really can. What support have you been able to access? I'm expecting a hollow laugh in response to this question.

I believe that LAC and PLAC should automatically be given ehcps..as their needs are so complex.

I don't know if this reassures you but I am pretty mentally robust and happy now but I think the needs of adoptees are much more complex now than they were when I was adopted in the 70s.

Are they siblings? I disagree that it’s ‘Nature’ this is about their past traumas.

You mentioned ADF?

Do you think that adopting sibling groups together with such complex needs is actually in the interests of the children?
What additional services do you think adoptees really need? Especially during teenage years?

The complex needs aren't prevalent when adopting at 1,2 and 4. I certainly think now they shouldn't have been adopted together. However they're 3 full siblings so they always got each other.

All adopted children should immediately have an EHCP as schooling is where most of the issues stem from.

I think in the teenage years adoptees (well me anyway) self sabotage as they feel they've got nothing to lose as they've already experienced huge loss. I was very quick to embrace adulthood and stop being a child (left home the minute I was able to, left the country etc...) and go onto the next thing. I had a fierce need to go it alone. I don't know how much of that was a trauma response but I was definitely wired differently.

What should schools do differently do you think?

I meant ASF. Adoption support fund. Yes it is definitely past trauma however also there are characteristics of their parents , nurture from ourselves hasn't changed that one bit

Have your teens met some adult adoptees who are good role models? Have they each got mentors they can relate to? Have they got other adoptee friends their age?

Even with normal teens we found there comes a point where they need other adults and other teens to lead them and obviously when the pool is big they can find loads of others like them. When the pool is tiny it is very lonely and confusing.

Schools havent got the training or the skills to deal with such complex needs. Primary schools can 'manage' their needs at such a young age but when secondary and hormones hits its when it changes. My son would present as happy all day at school , they would tell me he had a good day , he would get home caked from where he'd soiled himself and then go into destruct mode when he was home.

All 3 of our kids cannot relate to typical children and they only have friends that also have issues. It's the blind leading the blind. That's their influences.

Have you tried family therapy?

Has the eldest tried group therapy?

Is the eldest leading the younger two adoptees?

Hi OP, you sound absolutely done in and angry. I'm presuming you know there's an adoption board on here that is very helpful in terms of others with similar experiences and does not come up on active.
I can only imagine what the teenage years may bring. I'm an adoptive parent with a 7 yr old and I'm thinking now about how I'm parenting with a view to how this will be in the teenage years.
What different parenting techniques/approaches/ plans etc did you try when they were children? I know it's taken me a while to see the light with having to parent differently and o know that won't help everything. I do think you'd get more helpful questions on the adopter board but if you're looking to tell the world how hard it is I respect that.

Thing is yes i am done in and angry but it's now just acceptance. We can't change these kids it's inbuilt so we just have to bide our time . The kids have all had therapy since they've been here. All 3 starting another round of therapy come April.

I have a support group I have a fb group I started with 200 other dads going through the same and many times much worse than we are.

Only advice I can give us if starting g out. Get an EHCP as early as possible. Social media limits and use pace parenting model. You need to manage the life not change it.

If we could do it all again - we wouldn't.

Do we look at the older 3 different to our birth child - unfortunately yes. We didn't always.

Has all of this affected your birth daughter/her experiences? You say you're now shielding her as much as you can, sending nothing but love your way.

It's tough isn't it. None of us know how our kids will turn out, but early life experience is so fundamental for children.
My uncle is adopted and I have several friends of my age who were adopted, whilst I know they have struggled at times with the sense of dislocation and not being wanted by their birth family they have gone on to have happy marriages and families and didn't seem to have really difficult teenage years. Also NT.
I do voluntary work with kids and without fail, all the kids from care/adoption backgrounds have multiple needs - many are ND, have other disabilities or SEN. Their families must have extremely challenging home lives.
My sample size is deeply unrepresentative but it seems stark how much harder these kids seem to have it - and by extension, how much harder it is to parent them.
I've also noticed that the kids with more similar life experiences tend to gravitate towards each other too, not always with helpful results.
Do you think that society as a whole understands adoption very well? (I didn't, it's been an eye opener for me in recent years)

Thank you for sharing so openly OP, you sound angry and actually like you regret having adopted these 3 children, so you feel they have returned any of the love and affection you’ve shown them over the years?

Thank you that's what I expected. I hear you.
I find the 'prep' we got as prospective parents woefully inadequate. One SW mentioned PACE but nobody was able to tell us what that looked like in practice. We did a hell of alot of reading and hanging out on forums to get the actual truth of what life may look like. We are in Scotland so I don't think the EHCP applies here and the approach to adoptive children in schools is still very much that if they seem to be coping they're can't be any issues. Developmental early trauma is not understood by the majority of teachers in my experience.

This is exactly it, kids with needs gravitate to kids with needs with disastrous consequences.

This is a list of things that have happened in 1 year

1 child in hospital with such a deep cut from self harm, in process of being assessed with autism (initial assessment showed almost certain) moved schools due to sibling and friendship issues

Another child constant self harming . 2 suicide attempts, diagnosed with adhd, being assessed for autism with pda. Pyschosis issues. Had to move schools as it was unsafe for her to be there due to her own doing. Accused myself of sexually assaulting her, accused me of physically assaulting her. And on top of it all believes she's a boy. (As do most of the girls she knows) school changed name and gender without even discussing with us or even telling us, and teacher who did it had no knowledge of her background before doing it

3rd child - left 2 education courses as couldnt cope. Has stole hundreds of pounds out of the house to facilitate making friends , lost sight temporarily ( functional vision loss) as sister tried to kill herself. I was in on one ward with son whilst wife was in ward across the hallway with daughter on a drip. Had 2 seizures directly from not sleeping and wandering streets as anxious about meeting friends, which then meant he couldn't go away with college as safeguarding concern , had to leave the course and now can't learn to drive .

A normal day in our house would be an horrendous day for typical households.

I think GEN X adoptees have a different set of issues. Whilst a lot of us were forcibly removed from mother and baby homes, the bio parents were often just unmarried mothers. These days women have access to other options with unwanted pregnancy thank god. These days they are forcibly removed for safeguarding reasons and this brings a whole set of problems.

In my own experience of being adopted in the 70s, adoption was never talked about. No one seemed to understand early trauma and disordered attachment. We also had little/ no info on birth families so it was easier to be in denial. However my brother is my age, also adopted and he is not ok and has struggled with addiction and poor mental health all his life.

I really feel for you OP.