Come and talk sense into me about my 12 year old adopted DD....

[PositiveAttitude]

Please come and talk some sense into me!! ? Not name changed, but please be careful with me. I am feeling very fragile now!

DD4 was adopted from Russia at the age of 3, she is now 12. It has not been an easy 9 years, but we have stuck with it all. Lots of baggage from her awful first 3 years. She was born with a major deformity that has needed large operations. She had been put in the ?no hope? room in her orphanage from birth and was never expected to survive. She is now very fit and well.

We have 4 older birth children, but all 5 are close in age. (less than 6 years oldest ? youngest)

Having been through, or still going through the teenage years with her siblings I have dreaded her getting to this point in life.

Our relationship has not been a great one. At one time we were going to CAMHS, which helped, but has now stopped. One thing they discussed there was the fact that it had always been ladies working in the orphanage, her care was at best sporadic and probably very abusive with a lot of neglect. I was told this was the reason why she has always had a problem relating to me as her mum. She is mostly fine with DH.

Anyway, for the first time in 9 years we have enjoyed about a month of good behaviour, and her doing as she knows she should do. We have praised her lots ? DH more than me, because she cannot take praise from me, although I have made regular comments about how much more relaxed I feel and how pleased I am that she is doing well and as she is told ??. Etc, etc!

Over the past week, however, she has appeared to be quite down. Yesterday I asked how she was feeling and got nowhere, then her sister spent hours doing hair/nails and just chilling together to have the opportunity for her to open up and she did say she was unhappy, but that was it. She has denied any bullying issues at school. Today I pushed a little further and she said that she was upset about her real mum and everything she has lost from her past.

We have always been very open and honest with her and answered any questions truthfully and with as much information as we can. We have always told her that we would help her and support her looking for her birth parents when she is old enough to do that, if she wants to.

So why I am so upset that she is upset about her ?lost past?? I know I am being totally unreasonable. I have always known that this day would come and I have often thought about how I would feel, but this has come like a slap in the face! I don?t want her to feel that she has to be grateful to us, we adopted her to give her the love she never had and to give her a chance at a life.

She said some really hurtful things when it all came out. She would have preferred to have been left in the orphanage etc, etc. I now feel that I must have been such a rubbish mum for her to feel that she would have preferred a certain death than to have the life she has.

She now has a face like a slapped backside and I just don?t know if I can do this anymore if this is going to carry on.

Sorry for the epic. Advise would be great, but I think I feel better just actually typing all that lot out and helping me to clarify me feelings.

I don't know much about adopted children, or even teenagers yet (am dreading it!) but I don't think for one minute she really means it when she says she wishes she's been left in the orphanage. It's just another version of the old "I didn't ask to be born, I wish you'd never had me!" that teenagers are known for. It must be so much harder for you when she has such background issues and baggage, but I don't think you should take any of it personally.

You're wonderful to have given her a loving home, and I'm sure that one day, once the dreaded teen hormones have all gone, she'll be very grateful for all you've done for her.

No other practical advice really, you've got some rough years ahead of you but I'm sure you'll both come out the other side closer and much happier.

I wonder if it's just a knee jerk reaction to really understaning what it means to be abandoned by her bio parents. It is a huge thing for her to face up to now she really understands how they rejected her. Perhaps this is the first time her head knowledge and stabbed her in the heart.

Positive first off - you are not a rubbish mum.

It could be that your DD has difficulties relating to you because of unaddressed feelings about her birth mother. Add to that her treatment by the women in the home and its not hard to see why she would have ambivelant (right word?) towards the female figure in her life.

I feel for you going through the teenage years with your DD. My birth son has been pretty difficult since he hit 15. It has made me really dread my adopted son hitting the teenage years. Being adopted adds a whole new dimention to adolescence. I am assuming your dd doesnt have much info on her birth family, plus she was born with an obvious deformity. No wonder your DD is all over the place now! God only knows what is going through her head.

I think you should be enormously proud that you have stuck by her and tried so very hard to help her. Thats what a mother does, its what you have done - how can you be a rubbish mum?

I wish I could offer advice. I can only suggest a specialist service like Family Futures.

I wish you all the best with your girl.

PositiveAttitude, firstly a very unMNish (((Hug))) for you! Thank you for your honesty in writing down and sharing how things have been - I'm glad that this on its own seems to have been helpful. Secondly a bit pat on the back for hanging in there - not only parenting five DCs but adopting your youngest DD knowing that life had already been pretty tough for her.

My DD is 10 and has been with us since she was 3 (in fact I have been her/a mum for 7 years tomorrow!) she definitely experienced a huge traumatic injury at the age of 22 months but we also suspect that she experienced - at best - poor parenting and a degree of neglect (emotional, definitely) and at worst ???some other physical and maybe sexual abuse/grooming. So although thier stories are different the ages at adoption are at least similar and the story you have told above sounds very familiar to me. Her behaviour - though usually very subtle and unconscious - can be very challenging and I definitely do not always handle it very well at all.

When you were seeing someone at CAMHS, how much did they talk with you about attachment and attachment disorders? How much they help you put your daughter's life needs and experiences into the context of normal attachment/bonding and disordered attachments?

IME, it really can be so so hard parenting a child with an attachment disorder so please do not beat yourself up about how this latest episode has made you feel. The behaviour of these children - whom we love so fiercely (partly because life has dealt them such a crappy hand to begin with and thus, they are that bit more vulnerable) can make us ache and can make us both feel and act in a mad kind of way. And I reckon that that's partly because disordered attachment is a two way thing to a greater or lesser extent - the great insecurities with which our kids battle (usually on a totally unconscious level) also press our emotional buttons too and our reaction to them can be a way-out sometimes as theirs to us. And it can be very hard to keep loving someone who pushes away all that is offered, or sabotages the effort of loving them. It is hard to rest when someone so welcomed and embraced by you and your family struggles so much to trust and lay down deep roots and hankers after a life that you absolutely know would have been nothing short of hellish. Deep in there soul they are grieving a huge loss that they do not understand nor grasp, but which is like a gaping hole. It is a grief that is pretty impossible to comfort fully - and one that I don't think any child is capable of addressing themselves - I think my DD will only really heal this gaping grief in adulthood when she more rationally reflect on her life's journey - and even then, who knows?

This is such a hard thing, but it is all part and parcel of the job of undertaking caring for an attachment disordered child. Stay with this thread - there are some fab people who will support you massively. And remember that this is a hard job, not quite like parenting your other DCs, and one that few people really fully understand since the stresses and strains can be just that little bit more complicated.

Where are you based? There are some interesting support agencies near us here in Bristol.

Lots of love, MPD

I hope you don't mind me posting - I have no experience with adoptions, but what you posted struck a chord with me.

My mum left me when I was 5, and I was brought up by my Dad. However, at various points along the way, as my emotional development has increased (specifically, when I was an early teenager, when I left home and hardest of all when I had my first child) I've had greater understanding of what my mother did. And it hurts. Really hurts. And if she's 12, then she's going to really struggle to have the emotional maturity to deal with it, which is why she's coming out with such hurtful comments. She hurts, so why shouldn't other people?

I hope that gives you a little perspective, and I really hope that you get through this together

Wow thank you all so much. I didn't expect to get anyone responding!!

Annie, car and Naetha -thank you for your encouragement.

Che and MPD I think you have both hit the nail on the head. To outward appearances DD is a happy bright little girl. At home she can openly be foul to me! Everything that goes wrong in life is my fault! From the CAMHS appointments I dont remember a lot of things that we must have discussed. A lot of time was spent on the frustrations of DD having to be in control of her time. She used to be able to spend an hour eating a sandwich.Getting her to school on time was a nightmare. She would take at least 2.5 hours in the morning just to have breakfast and get dressed. That has now improved, just because she has decided to be quicker. It irks me that all my nagging, encouraging, staying calm, bribing, trying not to get angry for 7 flippin years, then the day she decides to be quick, she can be! I know I should be happy about that, but it has really made me seeth.!!
I digress..... Yes, I realise she is greiving and I feel so sorry for her.
But I am also feeling very selfishly ped off myself. This was really not how I thought this would be. There is a very different bond between adopted Dcs and birth DCs. When my birth DCs are 'orrible teenagers (normal teenagers) it pulls me apart, but after a very short time you love them totally again. When DD4 is a pain i then find it really difficult to show her love and affection afterwards. Sometimes I feel she has gradually knocked out all the feelings for her out of me.

Sorry, yet another moan. This is really unlike me. (I try to live up to my MN name!!!) DH is supportive,but he is so calm and nothing bothers him, so he doesn't understand why I sometimes cant ignore things. I feel I cant talk to anyone in RL about how I feel, because saying out loud makes it real and I dont want anyone to think that i dont love her. I do,its just hard.
If anyone asked me now if they should adopt i would say a resounding "NO".

I hope coming here and venting and being allowed to say how you really feel helps you move forward continuing to be positive and loving - I very much admire you.

I put my dd up for adoption, happily she came home to me after 2 weeks. It isn't a secret and now my dd is 13 she is so angry at me about it. Logically she understands the circumstances and why and that I did desperately love her but she still hasn't forgiven me, just as said by Naetha it's like she's hit a development point where the understanding has gone deeper and it's really hurting her.

PA - I think you have two completely different issues going on here and you are trying to lumpo them into one.

1 - your DD's struggle to overcome her start un life and to make sense of who she is (and I suspect that she must have attachment disorder to some degree gicen the background you mention)

2 - how you feel about her behaviour

Neither of you have to justify your feelings in a rational way - you both feel how you feel and trying to decide that this is right or wrong or whatever is pointless. You need to process how you feel as much as she does.

I would be very wary of deciding that she probably doesn't really mean what she says as someone suggested. I think she probably does mean it because she doesn't (yet) have emtional intelligence to process what life would have been like for her if she was left where she was and the fact that she doesn't have an understanding of how bad it could have been is, tbh, a pretty good thing!

I think contacting Family Futures is a good idea they have a good repputation for dealing with the most dificult of cases.

We are the most hurtful and vicious to the ones we love, so the fact she has been so trying is actually a good thing

She might be so upset with her hormones, her ill starred start that she wants to lash out and she wants you to reach breaking point, she will keep at it to see what will tip you over the edge. Her ability to recognise and use emotional cruelty against you will increase if you react negatively to her. She knows what drives you mad and she will push those buttons.

So, what can you do?

Recognise when you seethe, what the triggers are, list them.

Have tactics/strategies to deal with them. Have plan A, plan B etc. You could do something subtle like change your tone of voice, or tell her bluntly you are only happy if she is.

If she dishes the dirt, tell her you are very sorry you can't be her birth mummy but you would like her to tell her what kind of birth mummy she wants.

Write down a list of all the things she wants from one and see if you can make yourself like it, and if she doesn't want you to be her birth mummy tell her what would make you happier.

Have a reward system in place so she gets 'points' towards a shopping trip, etc, and likewise take 'points' away if she is blatantly rude.

You have to draw up clear boundaries but make sure your 'limit' is well before your 'breaking point'.

She is on the road towards independence so let her have plenty of opportunities to be herself, if you find her too difficult, think of your own sanity first please, and say something like, we'll discuss this tomorrow, and walk away.

But keep a check list of what happens and if she does something wonderful, make a huge deal out of it. The thing is, you need to chart progress and you need to do it together. Then if there is something you're seething about you can raise it with her in a calm, rational way. See if you can reach compromises with her.

Golly, I just wanted to say I tried many different strategies with my own dd then found one which worked well for both of us.

You will get there, there is light at the end of the tunnel. But she won't appreciate your efforts until she has a child of her own! But keep sight of small steps of progress and don't forget you are her guardian angel, you saved her life.

My god you are life's true angel (albeit a bit battle weary!)and we won't let you forget it so a huge hug from us all xx

Ditto, QueenBuzz!
PossitiveAttitude, your an angel! Get ready for those raging hormones or as my husband jokes, "buckle up"!
Come to think of it, he sometimes has to tell anyone of our kids (DS1, DSD2, DSD3 & DSD4), "life is not fair and no one owes you a thing so tuffin up buttercup". It's particularly funny when he says that to DS1 and that phrase now has been used so many times, we all smile and talk about the last time they were told that. Then a great comparison begins...

Feeling far more rational and able to cope today (DD not quite up yet, so may have something to do with it! ) Thank you once again, especially for sharing your personal experiences. Its really good to know I am not alone.

I?d never heard of Family Futures, but have just googled them and will look more into that.

Reading your advise I can see that there is no easy way through this. You have all, obviously worked this out!!! But I am encouraged that it is not me being rubbish. I am a very emotional person and a very loving mum. This sort of mothering just does not seem to work with DD4, though. I am aware I need to step back a bit from DD4, but feel guilty for doing so.

Maryz yes your post makes perfect sense.

DH seems to have got it all right with her. He can discipline without her pushing boundaries and can then turn on and off his emotions to respond to her. I just cant do that.
I know that she has tried to push us apart and cause problems in our marriage. Fortunately DH and I talk a lot and have always pulled together.

Her moods do control the household. If she is happy, then she gets really grumpy if we are not all bouncing around with joy, if she is po- faced she makes sure everyone else is too. I will have to try harder to keep it all on an even keel.

Off to buckle up, stay calm, work on plan J, set my limits, step back, and not get battle weary! Oh I can feel my angel wings flapping in anticipation!!

I certainly identify with what you are saying. In the past the harder I have tried with Dd the worse it ahs got, then I feel worse and off we go again. Viscious downward spiral. After nearly 9 years of tackling the time issue described before I just decided I could not do this any more. I now totally let her get on with it in the morning. She does what she wants to, not what I tell her to do, because I dont tell her to do anything, and it has all suddenly clicked.

She can be really deceitful and sneaky, which is something I really hate. Its the subtle looks and snide comments that others dont see that get to me. She lies terribly and cant see that this annoys me and gets her into more trouble than if she just owned up!

I recognise that she needs "different" mothering than my other DCs, but I sometimes find that really difficult. I am the sort of mum that I am. Although I know that different tactics work for each individual child DD4 is just way more extremely different if you understand me.

She is not aggressive (yet) and does not throw things etc. which is good.

Not sure where this is going and I ma at work, so better sign off now. Thank you once again