step child traumatized by his mother, need advice

[Spilani]

My husband and me are getting custody of his 7 year old son who lives in Brazil.

His mother has serious mental health problems ( deprssion/borderline personality )and she cant cope. She is quite frankly a mess and sadly the child is getting the brunt of it. I am sure he has ADHD and has trauma related behaviour problems. I feel like I am being handed a hurricane and going into brace mode when it hits.

I have a teenager as well who is the exact opposite of my step son, so it is going to be a very challenging time for our family.

Does anyone know of ANY books/support networks/organisations that could help us?

Thanks

No specific links but bumping for you.

It takes courage and commitment to offer a home to a child in pain but the rewards will be huge for you I am sure. It is bound to be difficult in the extreme but don't be surprised if it is also wonderful at times.

Good luck!

Hi. Not sure of any organisations specific to what your circumstances are but wanted to say Hi and welcome. I am stepmum to a child with ADHD (and autism) so if I can offer any help please feel free to ask.

It is challenging when you merge two families on a full time basis. My special needs daughter lives with me fulltime plus my DH and her brother, plus my 3 children. She sees her Mum at weekends. One of the hardest things is the fact that try as you might there are different history paths to each part of the family and sometimes things that are so natural to you as "normal" are completely different to their upbringing. If I am really honest we are even 6 years down the line two families sometimes ( and I smile sweetly and plod through) and sometimes one (somewhat large!!) family.

My biggest piece of advice would be to start as you mean to go on. Be fair, kind and understanding BUT be very careful of not making a rod for your own back that is hard to live with. I made the mistake (despite my DH telling me not to!) of feeling sorry for my dsd and so not being firm with her from day one. ADHD children need strict expectations and work best when they have boundaries and consistent expectations (can be very tiring and draining at times ) I wasn't like that in the beginning as I felt so sorry for her cos of her Mums problems and because I felt sad for her that she wasn't going to be living with her Mum anymore and wasn't as firm with her as I should have been. It has taken a good few years to get her back "in line" , that sounds an awful way to describe but I am sure as a Mum anyway you know what I mean

Also establish with his Dad who is going to play what roles in his life, will you be "Mum" and look after him alot and discipline etc or will you be more "distant" in the relationship.

I understand exactly what you mean about the hurricane arriving, I have days the storm seems too much and others we are sailing on a fairly flat sea!!!! Good luck,and ask away anything you think I may be able to offer advice about. x

Thank you so much your words mean a lot. I guess what I need is to do what I did with my oldest, set the tone from the get go and be firm. Most of it is common sense I guess.

Thanks for your support, much needed.

Yes if you are parenting all the children the same way you will have consistency which is so valuable to a child with a chaotic past.

You definitely need to set the same boundaries, albeit age-adjusted ones, for all children living in a household, whatever their parentage.

I expect your DSS will find an organised home with very clear boundaries immensely much easier to live with than the previous chaos he was living in. Make sure you keep him well occupied - he is unlikely to have developed many skills for entertaining himself productively with that kind of family background - so that he is not at a loose end with too much time to dwell on the past. Do you know much about him? Is he sporty, for example? Doing sports can be a great way of integrating quickly in a new culture/community as it is not dependent on language and the rules are easy to grasp wherever you are from.

Oh, and make sure you give him food he likes!

When I first got to know my DSSs, I never let the chilling words that one of my ex-boyfriends would repeat to me - that he had never wanted to spend more than the odd night at his father's house growing up because his stepmother was such an awful cook!

IME, it really is true that you can show your DSCs how much you want to make them happy by giving them food they like.