Adoptive mom with questions

Thanks for your encouragement and advice. Finally, things are getting better with a-daughter, and I think we can soon suspend counseling for her for awhile since things have stabilized (counselor also agrees). My heart is broken, yes, but more than that, my heart breaks for them to be so young and go thru this. I never knew it was going to be this hard. As soon as I can, and my son agrees, counseling will be the next step. I am sure I will go after him to gain perspective. Thanks again.

As Dickons stated, those years are difficult for most teenagers/young adults. I wonder if meeting his b-mother was, in fact, the catalyst for his behavioral change toward you. It could have just been a coincidence. At thirteen, it is normal for our relationships to begin to change with our parents. My guess is that his behavioral change was a combination of possible things: school environment, hormones, meeting his b-mother, etc. He is clearly having a difficult time transitioning into adulthood. If something doesn't change, it obviously will not get any better for him. Is he in school now? Most schools offer some form of counseling to their students. In many schools, the service is free. In schools that have fees, they are usually on a sliding fee scale. I honestly don't believe he is being passive aggressive toward you. He may well be suffering from depression. (This is not a diagnosis. It's a hypothesis.) When someone has depression, all of the pep talks in the world, all of the pleading, all of the demands, none of it matters. This young man has never dated. He cannot hold down a full-time job. He cannot bring himself to focus on school. And, he is living at home with his parents. (If you weren't his mother, and you were reading about this young man, what would you feel? I personally feel a ton of empathy for him. Something in his life is off, and he needs help to get himself back on track.)He needs help right now. And, I don't think he needs family counseling. He may benefit from one-on-one counseling.

I've bolded a couple of statements because those are what I want to respond to. The first, about his lack of initiative - how have you responded to this? If he doesn't pay his cell phone bill or car insurance, who does pay them? For many teens/ young adults, if someone else is paying them there is little incentive to do so. Is his room a mess, or do you pick up after him? This may sound harsh, but if you want him to start taking care of things himself, you may have to back off a bit and let him either sink or swim. I know you are worried about how it will affect his future, but it may affect his future much more if he does not learn to take responsibility. You also say that most of your focus has had to go to your daughter. I get that, when she has the needs she does. However, your son has to be aware of that. Kids who have a sibling with really intense needs can often get overlooked when their needs are not so much on the surface. I agree with a pp's suggestion for him to see a therapist on his own. He is an adult; he needs to have the opportunity to start working out what that means. If he wants and becomes ready to include you in that, he can invite you to join specific sessions. As an adult, he also does not have to be considered under your finances. There are mental health clinics that offer sliding scale fees or even free care; if he has minimal income he could qualify for these. You mention this as starting when he met his bmom, but it also seems that there is a lot of other stuff going on for him. Some of it may be related to adoption, but some may likely be related to other things.

I am not sure how this is going to sound, but here it goes. I am reading the book Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. After reading this book, I think, in my case, the relationship I have with my son in particular, since I have had him since a baby, was doomed for failure right from the start. I think I am a good, nurturing mom and all of that, but I never got to hear the other side of the story. My child's story. I asked, of course, about the impact adoption would have on him and was told it would be a loss, and we all suffer losses. I am gaining a different perspective from this book. Adoption is not the same as having natural children. I believe as an adoptive parent I was fooling myself into thinking this and short-changing my son by this fantasy. The relationship was doomed because it was based on a lie. Of course, I could not love him or my daughter any more. But it is not about that. It is about them losing their moms. The mom that was supposed to be there for them no matter what. I can see now that my son truly was doing things that might have "killed" his future, and this is the part that hurt me more than anything. The book talks about this. My son in his anger retorted, "Well, the dynamic has changed." Yes. It has. Instead of my son trying to be the perfect mama's boy on one hand and then destroying himself on the other, I hope we can now deal with the reality and complexity of it all. I hope in the future that adoptions can be more about children. Adoption is not the same as having natural children, but it doesn't have to be. I am okay with that. I hope and pray someday my son and daughter will be okay with it, too.

Guatmom, Many of us acted out in teen and early adulthood - many who are also successful in our professional and personal lives, and have a really good relationship with our family. I read the book and identified in many areas - what it did for me was validated that the feelings I had had, and some I still had in my 40's (when I read it) were normal feelings others had too. Validation is priceless. I wish your agency hadn't just fluffed off the loss because to some (not all) that loss is hard. Don't discount or write off the long-term is my advice...so he gets a later start...keep looking forward. Listen to L4R's advice - it's good. Make sure the counselor is adoption competent so his feelings aren't dismissed if he wants to talk about adoption... Don't stop with that book - read her second book - Coming Home to Self...it's the forging ahead book. Kind regards, Dickons

FWIW: This was true for me as well, but it took time and counseling.

I will read her second book as well. I will have to forge on some way. He was awful to me again today. I am deeply scarred. Every kid rebels somewhat. But he is an adult now, twenty one. He still seems sixteen . . No empathy at least towards me or his adoptive father. I hope there is not something deeper going on, but I would not be shocked if it were. It is so heartbreaking.

Hi Guatmom, A question occurred to me. You mention him doing things that could negatively impact his future. Have you asked him what kind of a future he wants, and how he intends to make it happen?

Yes, he is an adult. But, our brains are not fully developed until we are about 25 years old. He's still very much an adolescent.His adoption may well play into his current issues. But, being an adoptee may not account for everything. As an adoptee, I would say, sure, some of my baggage is adoption-related. But, some of it is from peer interactions. Some of it is from having an alcoholic father, etc.Just as you don't want to overlook the elephant in the room: adoption, you don't want to automatically make it the cause of all of his current issues. Human beings are complex, and we live in complex interrelated systems. Usually, our troubles have more than one contributing factor.I hope you will encourage him to seek counseling.

Yes it was very harsh, and I am sorry, but I don't see how this talk was supposed to improve his behaiviour. I realise it was said in anger and frustration but we as parents really have to rise above it. Once said it cannot be taken back. He has broken your heart? I wonder how his heart feels after that barrage? You had dreams for him? What are his dreams? He has failed you??? I didn't realise it was a test. My words may sound harsh but actually this is about him.

Your son reminds me of my brother and I a lot, and the relationship we have with our adoptive mother. I was 3 when I was adopted and my brother was 5. So a bit older, but myself not so much. We've gone through a lot of the same struggles and issues with motivation, self-esteem and many of the same battles with our adoptive mother. She is a boomer and from a different time and generation where things that we did simply didn't happen. Kids went to university, period. Kids moved out at 17 or 18, period. We baffle her. I think it's difficult for her accept that we're not simply "lazy" or "unmotivated". We are damaged. We're making progress, but it is a lot slower than our non-adopted peers. For a long time I tried to simply be non-adopted. To ignore it, to pretend and even convince myself that it wasn't an issue because everyone insisted that it wasn't. And there's so much hatred out there for adoptees who don't succeed because we're "given so much" and taken in and provided with all this "goodness". But as others have stated, it's not about love or a lack of it. There are some hurts that are simply primal and it can take lifetimes to understand them and to figure out how to deal with them. I'm 28 and I'm only now starting to allow myself to accept that I was and am still hurt by my adoption. To be angry about it. To have my own personal narrative. I wonder if your son perhaps is trying to work out his pain. Sometimes it can be so overwhelming that it takes over your life and makes it hard to focus on other issues. I don't think he's doing it maliciously. I think he needs help. A therapist, especially one that understands adoption trauma, would be wonderful. Maybe even sending him links about adoption from adoptee support sites. Our past sometimes catches up to us in our adulthood and we can hit a wall until we deal with it. That said, this could all just be an assumption. I do know non-adopted kids who are like this as well. Sometimes it's just the age. 21 is a legal adult, but not necessarily mentally. Heck, most of my peers are still partying it up, smoking weed every weekend, serial dating and have essentially no stability and we're 28-30.

I've noticed this "thing" that happens to some people who have survived difficult events where they had no control whatsoever. If it happens several times, this thing gets even stronger. This thing is even promoted somewhat by religion/spirituality. (I'm sure someone might be able to explain it better than me, or make some sense of what I am saying. But when I see it now, this thing stands out to me big time in others.) It's this idea of, it's all chance, I have little control, so I will just go with the flow. If I make a decision to do something, make a goal, things will happen out of my control so that it will probably not happen anywhere near like what I had planned, because I do not have control over much of anything. **** just happens. So I will wait to see what happens. Can be translated into, "God's plan for me" "my destiny" "can't fight fate" "I get what I deserve" "I am not free" etc. Sorry, not sure how to fix it, yet. But I did find a way to fix the mom disappointment stuff for me with my kids (and my mom) a bit. Someone gave me this little book "If I Only Knew - Gentle Reminders to Help You Treasure the People in Your Life" by Lance Wubbels. One of the quotes in the book: "If I Only Knew... How little I actually understood about you, I would listen closer to your words, search out your thoughts, and seek to know the deepest desires of your heart." "If I only Knew...That it was wrong to put others under my own expectations and make them feel guilty, I would have stopped manipulating them and chosen love as the higher way." It's all hard

The word that kept jumping out at me was 'doomed', I'm sorry but I disagree with this, you are an adoptive mother who has loved and raised two children, this is not a doomed relationship. A doomed relationship means to me that both parties have given up, this does not sound like you have given up, it seems to me that you are being a good parent and trying to work these problems out with your son. Every parent and child goes through difficult times whether there is adoption involved or not. I am an adoptee in reunion but I am also the mother of two daughters aged 21 and nearly 23, my eldest child rebelled and was a right little so and so and my youngest was diagnosed with depression during year 11 at high school. We have had a lot of battles over the years but the bottom line is that I know they love me and they know I love them and wouldn't give up on them no matter what. My aparents were the same, although I was not the one who rebelled my older sister who is also adopted did rebel, it wasn't till years later that she was diagnosed with bi-polar and anxiety but none of us gave up on her. Your story has not finished yet which to me means that you can't class it as 'doomed', I get that you are reading as much as you can to help your son and I think that is wonderful and it sounds like you are a wonderful mother. I just find that saying 'the relationship I have with my son in particular, since I have had him since a baby, was doomed for failure right from the start' is a terrible thing to think. You are doing as much as you can to help but also he has to come to the party and realise that he is in control of his life and that if he doesn't sort himself out or want to sort himself out no one can do it for him. I wish you luck and please keep coming here to vent or get advice and help. There are some many wonderful people here.

Quite often reality sucks, rarely as good as our fantasies. I think you are talking about two different relationships with one person. I think you are right that the as-if relationship is doomed from the start. It's not built on reality. There is a paradox there to wrestle with, the "as-if" tornado. It's sucked me up many times. It's fantasy, and reality. The fantasy part being, you are as if you share DNA. The reality part being, you are his Mom, and your mother and son relationship doesn't sound so doomed to me. It just might be a bit different, in better ways, now that you've seen this tornado and didn't run!

I think it's common for reunion to be helpful, but not, at the same time! I really think the hardest part is "dealing with the reality that to be adopted meant first you had to be given away" Requesting a meeting at that age, shows to me he was trying to deal with that, it had come up for him. And sometimes knowing who what when why helps, ALOT. Sometimes it makes it all too real. Sometimes it's just plain disappointing. Sometimes all that can happen and it's still all good. Sometimes it just takes a while for it to get better.