Step Child Coming To Live With Us...Help!

[Gingergoddess]

So, as the title suggests, my step daughter is coming to live with us, we collect her on Saturday.

To cut a very long story short.....my partner (soon to be husband) and i have been together for 4 years, he has a daughter aged 10 with his ex....she has never lived with us but we have maintained a good relationship with her throughout these last four years and have had regular access.

The mother has recently been found to be an alcoholic and almost died last week due to liver and kidney failure (we seriously did not know any of this was going on). Her recovery is going to be very long and we have taken the tough decision to remove her from her mothers care for her own safety for the foreseeable future, the mother is not fighting us on this and the child is aware that she will be coming to live with us.

Apart from the massive change this is going to bring to our lifestyle i am concerned about the impact this is all having on the child. We have this morning found out that she believes that her mothers actions are due to her being stressed about caring for her and so feels this has all been her fault, which clearly it is not.

I wonder if anyone has any ideas as to how we can repair this partially broken child, i want to do only what is best for her....

hi op, I agree with everything said here, you sound lovely and you and dp are definitely doing the right thing in a hard situation.

not sure if it has been suggested but I would make sure that you speak to your GP and the school nurse (gp surgery can give you the details normally) as your dsd is likely to need some form of counselling especially if she is of the belief that she is the reason for her mum's situation. the school themselves may also have access to this too.

make sure she knows that she cam talk to you both about anything that's worrying her including her mum. she is going to need lots of reassurance and confidence building. might also be an idea to get her to pick a pretty notebook that she can write down all her feelings and worries in and then once a week you and her or her and her dad can go through it and talk about what she has felt maybe?

What a tough situation for all of you poor kid. Getting her settled is obviously first port of call but definitely speak to school and you will have a charity or council run service for people with alcohol problems and their families they will help you or point you in the right direction.
Just do your best and don't hope for miracles being the child of an alcoholic can have life long consequences but she will have a better chance of a good outcome now with love patience and stability.

You definitely do sound like a lovely caring person, but I think SP's should not put pressure on themselves about the 'love thing' , for the time being you both just need to present a stable, caring, safe and very importantly a united environment for her! But your DP, will have to be prepared for her to be very needy of him, the poor child has been told she is not staying with her mum anymore, so naturally she will turn to her other parent, and this will impact on your relationship with DP, so don't for goodness sake beat yourself up about it. You will both need to be very open with each other, don't pretend you're OK with something if you're not, it will lead to resentment...talk honestly about everything, just not in the child's hearing! You should be proud of yourself for caring so much!!

As an adoptive parent the most important lesson I learned was the the importance of communication, both between adults and children and between me and my husband. The change is hard, emotions run high on all sides and expressing feelings appropriately is more important than what those feelings are (they can change in time it takes for someone to hug you/smile at you/stop howling for 30 seconds).

Boundaries are vital, all children need them but a traumatised child needs the security of firm limits...it helps them feel safe.

A trusted adult outside of the immediate family (sw/counselor/etc) can also be very helpful...for the child and for the adults!

Thank you everyone for your help and kind words today, it's been invaluable I can tell you

My niece has an alcoholic father and whilst not facing the upheaval of moving home lives with the issues daily.

Both she and my sister went to some counselling for families living with an alcoholic - will get the name for you. My sister who is not a group session person in the slightest -said meeting other people helped.

My niece likewise - she was 11 when they started and the realisation that she was not the problem - form these groups and meeting other kids was in her words - "epic aunty X". She said just being able to talk to others who understood made her realise she was not the problem.

She is not 15 and still goes 1-2 per year, but she says she needs to do when it gets bad.