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Dear Care and Feeding,
I’m really struggling to feel good about being part of my family right now. I’m an adoptive mom of two boys, 5 and 6. We adopted them from the foster care system about two years ago. They are great young people but have some behavioral issues and maladaptive behaviors due to their history. Their bio mom was an addict and was largely absent, so they spent their early lives neglected, hungry, and unsupervised.
Today they are doing well in school, making friends, and are smart, interesting kids—all great things. We have a team of therapists working with us to help us with the behavioral issues, which consist of inappropriate physical violence against each other when they are mad, stealing food, lying, not following rules (running through aisles in stores, screaming in indoor situations, etc.) and meltdowns/tantrums that are not typical for their ages. We are working through these things and know they didn’t have the same opportunity to develop manners and positive behaviors kids from non-neglect households do.
All that said, I’m really struggling. As foster and adoptive parents you know the journey will be different from traditional families, but after years of work and with COVID often preventing consistent access to therapists I feel stuck. We have no family to help us in the area and COVID risk prevents them from flying in to assist us. A babysitter isn’t an option. We’ve tried that but their behavior escalates so badly babysitters refuse to come back. The last time they were climbing furniture, showing the babysitter their butts, calling them names, and throwing things at them.
I generally start the day waking up to one of them looking for candy to steal from a cabinet, punching the other because they want to watch a different show, or screaming when I ask them to get dressed because they don’t want to. I can’t remember the last time we had a peaceful, or even ok, morning. On weekends all day is spent arguing with them to get them to complete the smallest task followed by tantrums. School days are often getting calls from their teachers for not behaving in class or getting into physical altercations in after care (they are now separating them as much as possible). There are typically meltdowns around dinner when they are tired and hungry, then they complain about the dinner I make. The day ends with them screaming they don’t want to go to bed, throwing tantrums because they don’t want to brush their teeth, and all of us feeling generally exhausted.
I feel like a slave to a family that hates me. I work from home full-time running a business and take on the household responsibilities, and my husband is a teacher. We adore these kids but we are just so spent. We are constantly working at therapy but with a mostly inconsistent schedule due to COVID the process is moving very slowly.
I’m starting to mourn the loss of being an actual mom. I feel like I’m just a manager. I’m so jealous when I see other families at the zoo enjoying themselves while my kid throws a tantrum because he can’t have more ice cream and throws his shoe at an unlucky passerby. I want to be the mom who can read a book while her kids play at the park instead of the mom who, mortified, has to pry her fist-fighting children apart every time we go. I dream of doing crafts or playing with blocks together and laughing and telling stories. I want to play in the snow together without being called stupid because I tell them it’s too cold out to go without a jacket. I just want a few family moments that feel good, that I can take pictures of, that we can remember as good times. My husband is far more immune to the arguing than I am and dealing with the constant stress much better. I feel like I’m drowning.
Is this common for adoptive families? I was so excited to finally adopt these kids and I feel like I’m completely failing them. I’m so unhappy and feel so guilty and just don’t know what to do. Any advice would be very much appreciated.
— Manager, Not Mom
Dear Mom,
I’m sorry you’re feeling so discouraged and overwhelmed during what sounds like a highly stressful, constantly challenging time. Your feelings are understandable and valid, except for the one that fears you’re failing your children. It sounds like you’re doing the best to manage their needs, and those needs are considerable, given all that they’ve been through. You’re showing up, day in and day out. You’re using the resources at your disposal to seek therapy. And even given the limitations of COVID, it sounds like you’re trying to ensure that the kids get some time to be active and outdoors. You’re doing your best to manage their temperaments, and I’m sure that’s difficult work with some adoption-specific challenges.
You may be mourning the experience of motherhood you wished for when you welcomed your children into your household (and that’s okay), but what you’ve described in your letter is “actual mothering.” You are an actual mom. It requires refereeing, teaching your kids not to berate one another (or you), managing behaviors in public and private and modeling love at the height of frustration.
It’s really hard.
If you haven’t already, consider joining a support and resource group for adoptive parents of school-aged kids. You may find new coping strategies there or patient, understanding families willing to meet up for some of the (safe, outdoor) activities you hope to do with your kids.
Since your husband seems less stressed than you are when it comes to parenting tasks, ask him to take a few more of them. Make sure that you’re building a few weekly breaks into your schedule. Take a walk alone. Spend an hour reading in the tub. Call a friend in a quiet room. Go on a solo drive. In addition to family counseling, try talking to a therapist on your own. Let your husband know you need a few opportunities to step away from the homebound chaos to reset and recharge.
Parenting any child requires stamina. This is especially true of children who’ve suffered harm before they were in your care. But stamina is built over time. You shouldn’t be expected to have it suddenly or to build it in isolation. Find community. Celebrate family wins, no matter how small. Hang in there. Best wishes to you all.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/02/struggling-adoption-parenting-advice.html
I’m really struggling to feel good about being part of my family right now. I’m an adoptive mom of two boys, 5 and 6. We adopted them from the foster care system about two years ago. They are great young people but have some behavioral issues and maladaptive behaviors due to their history. Their bio mom was an addict and was largely absent, so they spent their early lives neglected, hungry, and unsupervised.
Today they are doing well in school, making friends, and are smart, interesting kids—all great things. We have a team of therapists working with us to help us with the behavioral issues, which consist of inappropriate physical violence against each other when they are mad, stealing food, lying, not following rules (running through aisles in stores, screaming in indoor situations, etc.) and meltdowns/tantrums that are not typical for their ages. We are working through these things and know they didn’t have the same opportunity to develop manners and positive behaviors kids from non-neglect households do.
All that said, I’m really struggling. As foster and adoptive parents you know the journey will be different from traditional families, but after years of work and with COVID often preventing consistent access to therapists I feel stuck. We have no family to help us in the area and COVID risk prevents them from flying in to assist us. A babysitter isn’t an option. We’ve tried that but their behavior escalates so badly babysitters refuse to come back. The last time they were climbing furniture, showing the babysitter their butts, calling them names, and throwing things at them.
I generally start the day waking up to one of them looking for candy to steal from a cabinet, punching the other because they want to watch a different show, or screaming when I ask them to get dressed because they don’t want to. I can’t remember the last time we had a peaceful, or even ok, morning. On weekends all day is spent arguing with them to get them to complete the smallest task followed by tantrums. School days are often getting calls from their teachers for not behaving in class or getting into physical altercations in after care (they are now separating them as much as possible). There are typically meltdowns around dinner when they are tired and hungry, then they complain about the dinner I make. The day ends with them screaming they don’t want to go to bed, throwing tantrums because they don’t want to brush their teeth, and all of us feeling generally exhausted.
I feel like a slave to a family that hates me. I work from home full-time running a business and take on the household responsibilities, and my husband is a teacher. We adore these kids but we are just so spent. We are constantly working at therapy but with a mostly inconsistent schedule due to COVID the process is moving very slowly.
I’m starting to mourn the loss of being an actual mom. I feel like I’m just a manager. I’m so jealous when I see other families at the zoo enjoying themselves while my kid throws a tantrum because he can’t have more ice cream and throws his shoe at an unlucky passerby. I want to be the mom who can read a book while her kids play at the park instead of the mom who, mortified, has to pry her fist-fighting children apart every time we go. I dream of doing crafts or playing with blocks together and laughing and telling stories. I want to play in the snow together without being called stupid because I tell them it’s too cold out to go without a jacket. I just want a few family moments that feel good, that I can take pictures of, that we can remember as good times. My husband is far more immune to the arguing than I am and dealing with the constant stress much better. I feel like I’m drowning.
Is this common for adoptive families? I was so excited to finally adopt these kids and I feel like I’m completely failing them. I’m so unhappy and feel so guilty and just don’t know what to do. Any advice would be very much appreciated.
— Manager, Not Mom
Dear Mom,
I’m sorry you’re feeling so discouraged and overwhelmed during what sounds like a highly stressful, constantly challenging time. Your feelings are understandable and valid, except for the one that fears you’re failing your children. It sounds like you’re doing the best to manage their needs, and those needs are considerable, given all that they’ve been through. You’re showing up, day in and day out. You’re using the resources at your disposal to seek therapy. And even given the limitations of COVID, it sounds like you’re trying to ensure that the kids get some time to be active and outdoors. You’re doing your best to manage their temperaments, and I’m sure that’s difficult work with some adoption-specific challenges.
You may be mourning the experience of motherhood you wished for when you welcomed your children into your household (and that’s okay), but what you’ve described in your letter is “actual mothering.” You are an actual mom. It requires refereeing, teaching your kids not to berate one another (or you), managing behaviors in public and private and modeling love at the height of frustration.
It’s really hard.
If you haven’t already, consider joining a support and resource group for adoptive parents of school-aged kids. You may find new coping strategies there or patient, understanding families willing to meet up for some of the (safe, outdoor) activities you hope to do with your kids.
Since your husband seems less stressed than you are when it comes to parenting tasks, ask him to take a few more of them. Make sure that you’re building a few weekly breaks into your schedule. Take a walk alone. Spend an hour reading in the tub. Call a friend in a quiet room. Go on a solo drive. In addition to family counseling, try talking to a therapist on your own. Let your husband know you need a few opportunities to step away from the homebound chaos to reset and recharge.
Parenting any child requires stamina. This is especially true of children who’ve suffered harm before they were in your care. But stamina is built over time. You shouldn’t be expected to have it suddenly or to build it in isolation. Find community. Celebrate family wins, no matter how small. Hang in there. Best wishes to you all.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/02/struggling-adoption-parenting-advice.html
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Several other commenters really should stfu. They clearly know nothing about anything, but here they are giving advice along the lines of "be stricter" and "they were pretty young and it's been a few years, why aren't they better yet, I bet it's your fault, or maybe therapy's fault for not telling you to be stricter".
I mean, I don't know much about the subject either, but I somehow don't think that punishment is at all a solution for food-related issues from kids who certainly experienced food insecurity at a critical age. (And look how many examples of squabbles revolve around food! This is definitely an issue.)
LW needs help. First, she needs respite care, which she is entitled to. Some commenters pointed out that it's probably possible to arrange it so that the kids sometimes have staggered respite, one kid at home and the other away, and at other times they're both in respite care but separate from each other.
Secondly, she needs her own personal therapy, and she probably needs to change her sons' therapists if possible. Not because they're crap therapists, but because even with covid I'm not certain we can just handwave away an inconsistent schedule, and therapy, especially at this age, kinda has to be consistent.
Thirdly, I think she and her husband need parenting education, specifically dealing with their kids' specific issues. The food thing jumps out at me again. Apparently there isn't much of a consensus on whether kids with issues from food insecurity are better off being allowed to eat what they want, when they want OR if they are better off if the meal plan is scheduled, the food comes at regular and predictable intervals (with options for snacks in between), and certainly anything that they can't eat whenever they want is kept locked up or out of the house. It may be that some kids work better with one approach than another, I really don't know. What I do know is it doesn't look like LW and her husband are doing either of those, or even have any sort of plan at all. She doesn't want them eating candy in the mornings, fair - but it's somehow accessible to them, which is an unreasonable expectation for a lot of kids that age who don't have this background. And I'm iffy about her framing this as "stealing". If the candy is okay for them to eat some of the time, it's not stealing. And if it's not, again, it should not be accessible to them at all. Is all the "stealing food" food that they're entitled to but eating when she doesn't want them to eat it? Or is some of it stealing from classmates? If it's the latter, is there a behavioral plan in the school to help them curb this impulse? I'd suggest starting by keeping food that they're not allowed to eat out of their reach. And if they're tired and hungry at dinner time, it does seem that the easiest solution is to not let them get that hungry. Have food available as soon as they leave aftercare, or otherwise halfway between getting home from school and whenever dinner is served.
LW and Husband are not getting the support they need, support that they really are supposed to be getting. If these kids were adopted from foster care, social services is dropping the ball here.
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Her husband is weirdly absent from the letter, and I cannot tell why. Maybe he is actually absent, either physically (not present, beyond work hours) or in practice (not contributing). Maybe the LW simply focused the letter exclusively on her experience with their kids and didn't think to mention her husband. In most cases, I can't tell whether the husband is included in "we."
Either way, LW and her husband need to make sure they are sharing the labor and giving each other breaks. They can divide tasks to each do what they are best suited for. This can be for routine chores—my wife hates cooking; in my house, I cook—but it can also be for conflict management. One of the few things LW says about her husband is that he handles the arguing and stress better. Maybe LW can fold clothes (or whatever) in quiet while the husband takes the boys.
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