I don't know how I can go on.

[exhaustedmumofone]

Regular poster but have NC for this, will try to be as brief as possible.

Adopted a little girl 11 years ago. She is now 12. From an early age she was extremely hard work, persistent defiance, lying, stealing, oppositional. I tried many different approaches to parenting and muddled through. I became a much firmer parent than I'd ever anticipated and had to put boundaries of steel around her. It worked to a greater degree. This was in the days when the issues around early attachment and trauma weren't widely known. The situation nearly cost me my relationship with my DP and I fell out with a number of family members and friends who saw my parenting as the cause of her problems rather than vice versa.

At around age 7 school finally became concerned and we went to CAMHS. She was diagnosed with attachment difficulties. All the pennies dropped with me and I read everything about therapeutic parenting I could get my hands on. Not one person was able to give a single piece of practical advice. They just told me to keep on doing what I was doing as it seemed to be working.

It has been an extremely difficult battle but by the age of about 10 things calmed down considerably. She and I have a very close relationship most of the time. We spend a lot of time together, she has become an emotionally intelligent girl and we have worked together on helping her to regulate her emotions. We have a lot of fun most of the time and lots of shared interests. I love her very much.

About 6 months ago her behaviour started to plummet (serious illness in a family member, an increasingly dependent parent I care for and adolescence all in the picture so no surprises really). The stealing, lying and defiance have been ramped up. Her attitude is awful, she can manage for a couple of days but then the crap behaviour and attitude return. I'm on my knees with it. I'm physically exhausted, on the brink of sinking back into depression and my blood pressure is high again.

I don't know what to do. I have a partner but we don't live together, not that he can manage her. I have no babysitters as either I'm not confident in them being able to manage her or they won't babysit for fear of false allegations of physical abuse which she used to make regularly.

She's having therapy at the moment and the therapist is aware and trying to work with her. I am paying privately for therapy for myself. But I'm so low and exhausted. The early years were so very hard and I can't believe we're back there. I don't know how to find the energy to continue.

When she was around 7 years old school finally picked up on it. We went

I am so sorry you and DD are having a tough time. I became very ill when DS (who like your DD has needed energetic therapeutic parenting with cast iron boundaries since we first met) was nearly 10, and just when some calm behaviour would have been helpful, his behaviour became particularly challenging. I think not having me fully on his case, really upset his equilibrium, and he went back to wanting to be babied and refusing to do anything for himself- demanding attention in the most challenging ways. He literally wanted to pull me back into full health! I wonder if the change in grandparents health has upset your DD in a similar way?
We eventually got some help in the way of direct payments from the disabled children's section of social services ( DS has LD and attends a special school- post adoption support locally at the time was not available)). I was allowed to use these for childcare ( so I could go for treatment or just rest) and also for help with the never ending cleaning up (don't ask!). I frankly do not think I would have recovered without some support. I do not know if something similar is available to you. I do think the constant stress of caring for DS ( never able to relax for a second) was part of the reason I became so ill.
I hope you get suitable support. The good news DS (an older teen now) is happier again.

Apologies, Rainatnight. You''re perfectly right, of course.

rainatnight can I just ask, in relation to what you have said about "own" and "birth parents" and contact not being ok for most children who are adopted, does this come from the adoption training you had to undergo? Thanks. My dc who I referred to in this thread is not adopted.

I hope all is going well, OP.

Well, not liking the term 'own' parents is just really a preference of most adopters. But yes, in the training, you do cover terminology especially to make sure that it's appropriate for the children, so you might talk about 'tummy mummy' and 'forever family'. (Though people will obviously have their own preferences about how to explain these concepts).

And on contact being ok or not, the point I was making is that fifty seemed to be referring to scenarios where birth mothers had relinquished their babies and the children found it quite healing to be reunited with them. Whereas, in this country, the vast majority of children placed for adoption have been removed from their birth parents for reasons of abuse and neglect. So they therefore can't have safe direct contact (in most cases) but are free to make contact with them when they turn 18. And yes, we covered it in training.

fifty, thank you for your comment.

OP, I'm very sorry to derail. I hope things are going better.

rainatnight thank you very much for the reply. I would like to know what the training said about contact and also whether the term "birth mother" was used (because your reply referred to other terms), but I don't want to derail further so I will start another thread. Thanks for replying.