To throw adopted DS out?

[Aimen0]

DS was officially adopted when he was 1, he always knew he was adopted but he had a good childhood and he was happy. His behaviour wasn't always perfect (he got detentions in school etc) but no child is perfect all the time!

He's now 17, 18 in march and he's barely home, very into drugs and when he is home he's unpleasant to be around. He shouts at the dog, gets in my face and has hit his DH. He was accused of spiking a girls drink with pills (it wasn't reported and he denies this, but I don't know what to believe).

We don't know what to do anymore, DH also works away so it's just me most of the time. The friends he had from school etc have distanced themselves so it's just friends that are into drugs.

I'm at my wits’ end and so worried about him. I don't know if I actually would go through with throwing him out but I don't know what to do

I'm not sure it is the cause. I think it is highly relevant however and common sense suggests that is where one would start looking in the absence of other traumas.

As parents we need boundaries. Have a chat with your DH and your other son about what those boundaries are. They can be quite minimal but focus on not abusing others or relate to drug use. He cannot keep harming others. Family counselling may not be an option but if it is I'd pursue it. Then a family meeting to tell your son you love him, everything you love about him, that you will always be there as a source of support but there are certain family boundaries which are non negotiable and apply to all family members and if he can't meet them he will need to find somewhere else to live.

@lifeonmars100 do you believe that children adopted at one are not affected by the trauma/knowledge of being adopted?

Both mine were adopted at 10 months and my goodness have they been affected. My DD is 17 and has a terrible year due to revelations which have come out about her birth family. Her mental health and self esteem is on the floor. DS has struggled with low self esteem his entire life.

I appreciate that this man mistreated you, and that you understandably have zero reason to wish him well, but I think regarding someone who was 'adopted from a third world country' as 'living life on easy mode' is deluded. You can know nothing about his earliest life, and the amount of loss and change of caregivers he will have gone through, even in a best case scenario between birth and whenever he was transplanted to a new country and his adoptive parents.

I'm not an adopter, but I have several close friends in Ireland who adopted Chinese girls in the 1990s, when there were a lot of intercountry adoptions from China. Those girls have grown up in loving, attuned environments, with good efforts made to keep them in touch with their culture of origin, but inevitably they've hit more than the usual hiccups. How could it be otherwise? The woman I know best, now in her late 20s and a lovely person with young children, spent her first year in an orphanage in a big provincial city, was expected to die of Hepatitis B, was then boarded out to a poor family in a rural area when the orphanage was overcrowded, then taken back to a different city aged eighteen months and handed over, a tiny, undersized baby, to a complete stranger who didn't speak her language in a hotel conference room.

Her adoptive mother is a good friend of mine, a wonderful person and a good, sensitive mother, but inevitably couldn't protect her wholly from racism at school, queries about identity, and from trying to find her biological family and being scammed when older, to mention only a few.

And this was a best-case scenario.

The fact he was adopted at 1 doesn’t mean he won’t experience the attachment and abandonment issues - yes the older you are when adopted has an impact but certainly at 1 it will as well.

Firstly genetics do play a part but we also take a sense of who we are from our family and that includes how we look and personality types all of which are a mixture of innate and learned behaviour.

Without that genetic hook it can be difficult to find that sense of belonging and who we are which leaves them vulnerable to be groomed into finding that belonging in places that aren’t necessarily good

My DS was adopted at 3. Drug and alcohol misuse contributed to him going into care.

He was a feral little shit at 14 / 15. Drugs, alcohol, out of education.

He knew he was adopted and we paid for private counselling sessions from about the age of 7 so that he had another outlet to express his feelings/anger around this.

It's so hard and I have been where you are. If you can message me privately I am happy to respond with more info.

But we stuck with it and he is now 23, has been working for a couple of years, contributes financially, and on the first rung of a management ladder.

We still have issues that other families don't get - unexpected/unknown siblings contacting via Facebook for example.

But the future is more positive now than I once thought.

Could you be any more ignorant? There may be genetic/biological factors, there will be early trauma and attachment issues, as others have said. Itust be great to be so utterly ignorant and see the complicated world in such black and white terms.

@MargoLivebetter as I said I would never usually speak like that that in real life or around my children but there are times when it has to be mentioned as relevant. School meetings , doctors appointments when asked about hereditary issues, or when asking for help in a parenting forum.

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.

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 😆 😅

I know.

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.

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?

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

I mentioned he's adopted because if I hadn't I would be accused of drip feeding later on. My older DS wasn't adopted but I would feel the same if he was behaving like this at 17, nearly 18.

He doesn't have a social worker, we did have some support after the adoption but we haven't for year's. His birth parents weren't into drugs.

He used to be close to my older DS, he doesn't live here anymore but DS agreed he could go and stay with him and his girlfriend (only around an hour away) but that didn't work out as his behaviour and the drugs was very much the same, if not worse because he'd constantly tell them that they couldn't tell him what to do.

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

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.

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

Nah.

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

He's probably going through trauma, poor lad.

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

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

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

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.

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

Look up externalising behaviours in PTSD