Ds 18 will be working part time and going to a state college close to home which he can commute to. He has a small small college saving plan and a small merit based scholarship. We have been able to save enough to pay for a semester. He also completed two years of college during his high school years paid for by the state so we’re looking at only two years anyway.

We sent her to school and they called two hours later because she was really tired and felt nauseous. She was running a slight fever. She laid into me in the parking lot because she forgot her lunchbox and I had just loaded her disabled brother in the car and told her calmly she could get it when she went back. So, she yelled at me about that. She has refused to sleep at night or take naps and this morning refused to eat breakfast. Of course she got sick. I’m trying to find someone who can come over because she’ll behave if someone else is here. DH is swamped at work because people are sick with the flu and he’s having to run interference. It’s the perfect storm.

Someone please tell me this will get better....today I’m calling psych hospitals to find out the procedure for admittance just in case. She threatened us saying, “if you give me consequences, then you know what I’m going to do.” That usually means a multi hour rage. She was horrible this morning. DH and I are supposed to go away for 24 hours this weekend. We haven’t been away for a night for over ten years (not counting when I came to our current location to find a house and got altitude sickness) and finally found someone to watch my oldest son. She may wreck that also and we both just want to sit down and weep. Everything is starting to point to a bipolar condition imo.

I'm starting to wonder if it's bipolar sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if she has FASD. Sometimes it seems like RAD. This is why I'm getting her a full evaluation. I can't possibly guess and I'm going to let someone else do it. Thankfully, I have a lot of situational symptoms and evidence of what being on Prozac did to her. I've been charting her moods and rages for four months now. At first, I was thinking hormones were inducing rages since the first few months I was charting were every 28 days. Then it went to every two weeks and now it's weekly so something is ramping up. I do believe she is close to getting her first period. That will not be a fun time. She's really much younger in hygiene than her age and my training should indicate. I still ask her if she's wiped her bottom after she goes to the bathroom because she still forgets.

I determined today that raising this child and trying to love her will be my "offering" to God. The apostle Paul mentioned how he endured beatings and prison for Jesus and while I know it's not the same, in some ways, I do feel slightly trapped by this child. I will do what I can and be what I can and leave the rest for God to deal with. I am learning how not to take responsibility for her choices. I can do what I can and get her as much help as I can, but I can only do so much and some of the choice has to be hers also. I told her the other day that as her mom, I would choose to love her and be there for her, but if she was going to choose to push me away, there was nothing I could do to stop her. I told her that she had to make a choice also and that I would just wait. I KNOW it's not what people sign up for when they consider adopting an orphan. I wish wish wish that the church in general would also have a whole program of support and easy to find resources (including money) for people who do so. It's usually not a fuzzy happy picture like they show.

As a toddler, she was much like she is now - not wanting to listen to us, temper tantrums, wanting to run away. In early elementary, she was pretty ok. She was little high strung and a little on the hyper side, but not too excessive. She didn't stress us nearly as much. I feel like she's regressed back to those toddler years when she first came to us. But, sometimes parenting a teen feels like parenting a toddler again with a NT kid.

11 Maybe—all other surgeries she’s had since we got her have been “fun” for her. She actually looked forward to her hospital stay. She never seemed to remember much of the waking up stuff-only the games and movies and prizes—the fun nurses, etc. I never got the impression she was having trauma relapses from surgeries. I’m just guessing the surgeries in China were helping add to the RAD.

My dd was 2 1/2. I think part of the problem was that she had some surgeries in China to repair a cleft lip/palate. I’m not sure how much care was given after the surgeries. She also came with scars on her butt from diaper rash. It really shows lack of attentive care which shows that she most likely didn’t have a consistent bond with a caregiver. My friend fostered to adopt an 18 month old. She also has issues.

I think adoption agencies are upfront about what a kid with RAD looks like, but what they don’t explain is how it so affects the family or the emotional health of the parents. Yes, I parent her differently. I have to put up with judgements against my parenting skills/who I am as a person. For example, I am the only parent who is at home that puts her child in after school care. I also am more of a helicopter mom than she should need at 11 years old. I would love to stop and let her have more freedoms but she just can’t handle them yet. I realized watching the parenting FASD video above that how they parent their kids is much like how I parent my dd. She always has to tell us her plan for playing outside, we have a pretty tight schedule, and if she does something wrong, we ignore it initially because we know she will escalate. Makes me wonder.

Yes, changing adult diapers is infinitely easier than my dd. I would still caution you against adopting. Part of my fear (DH says that he has no premonition that she actually would) is that she will injure my son to cause DH and I distress. She would never never think to do that most of the time and would be horrified to know I think this of her, but in the midst of her rages, anything seems to be possible. She is going to school now because I couldn’t handle the stress of teaching her any more. So far, she does go to school without much problem, but I also know I’m going to need a plan for when she decides she just doesn’t want to. She’s already done this with church once and we had absolutely nothing we could do. This is one of those things I see on the horizon that I need an action plan for. That and if we send her to the psych ward to keep her safe, how can we transition back to home without us having pure chaos and accusations from her. Also, I have become convinced we are looking at orphan/foster care wrongly. A lot of these kids seem to need a degree of separation from the intense love a family brings. There should be more group homes of sort where kids would be safe and given a real chance at a good life without the structure of a family. Maybe too close of a love situation is like sensory overload for autistic kids. They just need a less intense relationship status.

I think the hardest part of this is that if she said to me, “I want you to be my mom” or any such thing similarly, I could deal. Maybe deep inside she wants that. But last night, when I said, “I think deep down you really do want a me as your mom but it’s underneath a lot of confusion”, she looked at me very calmly with no sorrow or anger and said, “I really don’t want a mom.” To constantly hear that while everything I care (peace, my family, my marriage,my sanity) about is destroyed by her makes it really hard to keep trying. So, if anyine’s heart is warmed by the focus on the family touching pictures of adoption, I will tell you the advice I should have listened to, “Don’t adopt. It can destroy your family.” I’ve seen it more often than not. For every good story I know, I have two that are horrific.

thankfully, I did find a therapist who does have two children with RAD. She gets it.

Further question--how do people live year after year not believing anything will change and will most likely get worse? How do people live in a constant hard?

How do you survive? How does your marriage survive? How does your health survive? My dh and I are stressed to the point where I'm currently shaking and he's ready to cry and this was just trying to get dd to school. I'm in therapy for trauma and dh probably needs that too. My therapist says we need family counseling but also knows that I am dealing with so much trauma that it wouldn't be too effective at this point. My dh is concerned that despite my many efforts to keep healthy, that I will not live as long as I should. I feel the same about him. Dd missed a psych evaluation that took me two months to schedule due to the flu. I have another one in a month. I'm pretty sure there's a whole list of diagnoses that she will receive.

Yesterday, my therapist mentioned this very thing. I can't even remember what she said fully, but said it is a complex situation. It's like treating an abused child for abuse of the past and then sending them right back to the abuser. What I am finding is that it's like a dam waiting to explode. Right now, things have gotten to a point where water is spilling over the top of my emotional dam and eroding the whole thing. Eventually, that dam is going to fail. What the therapy has been slowly doing is releasing some of the pressure on the dam through alternate spillways so that the whole thing doesn't blow. So, I'm dealing with past events to relieve the pressure so that I can hopefully deal with them better and not have it affect me as much. So, like you, I am dealing with ongoing stress of a situation that may/may not change and a situation that won't change. I'm also dealing with past trauma that gets triggered every time my dd explodes in anger or every time my ds has a medical thing that needs taken care of. I have to relieve the pressure of the past trauma so that I can appropriately deal with the present stress. I can't even get to learning how to deal with day to day stress because I'm so backed up with past trauma. It's getting better. I'm not a total basket case every time I go to therapy like I was three months ago. But, it's not a quick fix either.

Anybody who had experience with EDMR have a really hard day afterward? I wasn't rehashing a bunch of memories during the rest of the day afterward, but it did bring up a lot of trauma and thoughts that made me realize the root of other issues I've had for years. I'm not getting new memories but seeing how thought patterns are connected. My dh is not happy about me going through the wringer every week. I see it as good since all I've been doing for over 20 years is pulling off the top of the weed while that sucker has been sending out strong roots so it can keep growing. I'm finally getting to the root of a lot of issues and it's painful.

I have a 19 year old disabled adult who is my child. He is really easy going and was interested in what we did in homeschooling, but the only way I was able to homeschool well was when he was in school. He is a full time job in itself. He just wants attention all the time and never understood that I needed for him to be quiet for a little bit. He also never really played by himself well. Now that he has "graduated" from high school, I did wind up sending my last two children to school because it was too much for me.

I can’t disagree. I had someone at church tell me she was adopting and wanted to know my story. She has this really sweet family with six kids and they all seem to really care for each other. I basically begged her to reconsider. That the adoption agencies tell you how the child may have issues but they don’t tell you how that changes the very fabric of your family or your very life. Then last Sunday, a enthusiastic special speaker got up and said everyone should adopt. I really wanted to tell, “noooooo!!!!” My DH told me before he spoke not to take what he says too literally and that I didn’t need to respond. If anyone had asked me about adoption afterward I would have asked if they wanted me to be nice or honest. My trauma/ptsd —the event that makes me short of breath, sets my heart racing, and gives me nightmares happened almost nine years ago so very much in the past. I have weekly trauma that erupts due to the ongoing issues my dd brings that are mirroring that event along with new ones. Just tonight I grabbed my 14 year old and left the house as my daughter created new destruction in her room because it was my fault she stole my ring. I am unable to handle this type of event until I deal well with the past events. I’m not totally sure I’ll be able to even after I get healing.

@PeterPan, thanks! That looks like it will be helpful. I am taking care of an adult son with multiple special needs and my daughter has prescription sedatives that we use when she rages. She’s gotten physical with us also. I am now wondering if we as a society are looking at orphan care correctly. For some kids, I think the family atmosphere is too much for their emotional health.

I have been diagnosed with PTSD/trauma by my counselor. There are events in my life that when I talk about I get short of breath, my heart races, and I get nightmares the day I talk about it. I have a son that has been through some major surgeries but my triggers are from my adopted daughter. The two may be related. The stress of the first made me vulnerable to the stress of the second? My counselor is trained in EMDR so there’s a good chance I can move past this. My body is hyper like I’m drinking caffeine constantly (I don’t) and I have major sleep issues. I’m irritated that trauma -primary and secondary in parents is not mentioned when you adopt a child. They talk about issues the child may have but not issues the parent may develop. All my daughter has to do is argue with me about something I’ve told her to do/ not to do and my heart races and I have to do breathing excercise to calm down. We’ve done some things to make sure I’m not alone with her and DH is always around but I hate that my life has become this. Anybody else btdt? What worked for you?

Sugar creek gang—very moral—a little preachy—stories about boy adventures

Actually cost is not a big issue in the $500 or under range. My husband has very good company benefits that give him $500 per year (happy dance here) for fitness related items/ gym memberships(only for him) . He bought a nice bike last year. So, since I could use some more cardio and he could use a different machine that is different from the elliptical he does use, we have the cash. We've had the elliptical for at least 10 years and it has been used weekly so there's a good chance he/me will use this one also. I could use more stress relief than I get at my Crossfit gym. I have a lot of stress.

I am looking for an excercise machine around $500. We have an old elliptical and are looking to either replace it or add a different machine. Yes, we use them. I was also thinking of getting a spin bike and a peloton subscription for “classes”. So, suggestions?

My ds had a fever for about 6 days. He is now hacking and coughing but no fever. For us, fevers usually last less than 24 hours so this was a big deal in our house.

Basically, look at a model home and declutter to that point. The biggest thing I had as a homeschooler were bookshelves full of books. Take about 75% of them off and box them up. I had books on shelves that were the same height and used a nicer hardcover book as decoration like a library would. Also, if you have a room that's a "color", consider painting it a neutral. I had a sage green master bedroom that I liked, but the stager said that she didn't want someone walking away because one room wasn't to their liking (silly - yes). I think our current home didn't sell right away in a hot market because the color in every single room was dark. Same color dark, but about the third level on a paint strip. People probably saw it and thought - that's expensive to paint the whole house. Meh- I did it myself. It took me three months, but in a market with a lot of choice, you don't want to be the house that was passed by because of a paint color.