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wow, I found this board today and it is great! My husband and I adopted a 16 year old girl from a third World Country, she has been with our family for almost 2 years now and I would love some advice. We went into this very blind I will admit. We wor ed with a pastor and assumed we were being told things truthfully and were not. We have 3 bio children the oldest of whom is now 14 and our family is being affected very negatively. Basically to ma e a long story shorter, our adaughter did not ever have a father hers died at age 3. She formed a very unhealthy attachment to my husband and because of that has given me a lot of trouble and resents me basically because she wants my place, not to be my daughter. She did not feel this way about me at the very first. My husband did not see this at first and when I tried to tell him he would just say that is bazzar and go on. He can no longer deny it because our daughter has come out and admitted to her feelings for her dad. My husband is a very gentle man and always sees good in people. He finds it hard to be firm with our daughter and she misinterprets his love. I have no doubt that my husband sees our daughter as just that, our daughter, but it still causes tension. Our daughter is now 18 years old and still causing problems in the family lying, manipulating etc. My husband and I have chosen to tell our adaughter that she will honestly see help or she must move out. We have ta en her to counselling in the past and she always lies and we get no where)she is choosing to go to a Christian home for troubled girls and will go there if accepted but has already made it clear to me she wants to come home when she is done with the program there. Why should I allow that to happen? I honestly believe in my heart I have been fair with her and I would do the same if my bio daughter ever did such things. She is 18 legally able to leave our home but not really ready. What do I do!!! Have you ever heard of such a situation!!!
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With this background, your child probably has substantial issues that must be evaluated and treated professionally. You cannot help her without professional guidance, support, and treatment. You need a therapist who is experienced and trained in this type of work. At least 50% of the person's caseload must be adopted and foster children and the therapist should be a Registered Clinician with [URL=http://www.attach.org]ATTACh[/URL] or at least meet those min. standards. go to their website and see who is in your region.
regards
You might want to read Parenting the Hurt Child by Gregory Keck and Regina Kupecky. It is the follow up to Adopting the Hurt Child by the same authors. Their work is about the parenting issues faced by those who adopt children from the foster care system here in the US or from institutional settings in international adoptions. These books describe your exact situation.
Another useful book is Parenting with Love and Logic by Foster Cline. He is also the author of Can This Child Be Saved, Solutions for Adoptive and Foster Families.
You can order these books online from [url]http://www.tapestrybooks.com[/url]
Also, you might want to attend the North American Council on Adoptable Children conference this month, July 28-August 1st in Minneapolis, MN. The authors of these books will be presenting. There are a lot of workshops offered that deal with attachment issues, the adoption of older children, parenting strategies, etc.
Good luck with a tough situation.
While I think those are excellent books, as are
Building the Bonds of Attachment by Daniel Hughes and
Attaching in adoption by D. gray.
In this instance, and in many others in fact, the situation is way too complex and difficult for parenting alone and books alone to be able to remedy the situation. You should read the books and get professional help asap since without professional help it is unlikely that anything will change for the better.