Our 10-year-old daughter has been struggling for over a year now with lying and other sneaky deceptive behavior. It all seemed to start when the adoption took a lot longer than any of us thought it would. However, around the same time her birth family stopped communicating with us despite our efforts to engage them in activities or correspondence. Therefore, the actual cause of her new troubling behavior may have been mixed.

For a while, she thought that if she were bad enough, we would send her back to her birth family. Of course, that wasn’t our decision... more

When I leave the house, even just for a few minutes, some of my adopted children seem to go crazy. They have been known to grab food and run to their bedrooms, throw temper tantrums, threaten to runaway, or begin making random telephone calls. One of my readers suggested there was a problem with one of my adopted daughter’s ability to self-regulate. When I attended a support group meeting last week I brought the issue up with the therapist running the group.

The therapist felt the problem was driven by anxiety and she had an idea that she thought might... more

Is it hard for you, as the mom of a child with special needs, to admit that you truly don’t LIKE your kid? It shouldn’t be. In that elusive parenting manual that doesn’t come with our kids there needs to be a chapter explaining that it’s ok not to LIKE your kid, even though you LOVE him. (Personally I think all parents of adolescents are caught in this state much of the time, whether they admit it or not.)

But announcing to the world, or just yourself, that you don’t like your kid is a difficult thing to do. It goes against all the things we’ve been taught in “mommy... more

My lost luggage arrived home in the nick of time yesterday…time enough for me to unpack and Super Dad to repack the same suitcase. He headed out this morning for the week. He is a frequently traveler, which at our house means that he is on the road about 2-3 nights out of each week. This week he is gone Monday – Friday and will be next week as well.

I’m often told by other women that they just “could not stand it” if their husbands traveled that much. I have really not given it much thought as something I have control over or even much of a right to have an opinion to.... more

Super Dad has been a bit frustrated lately. Things have been building up (over the last 18 months or so), and I think it’s partly because we both thought that our lives were only going to be temporarily altered by the due process hearing with the school and ultimately life would go back to some point of equilibrium. And, that hasn’t worked out at all like we planned.

I never dreamed that I would have to give up working at my consulting business entirely, and take on the full-time job of teaching LuLu. Super Dad wasn’t planning on a permanent reduction in household income, or a wife who... more

Do your children stick up for each other and tell you, the parent, that you are not being fair when you are berating one of their siblings? While I find it annoying, it also warms my heart to realize how much they actually care about each other. It demonstrates that a real bond has been established between the siblings. It also indicates a transition from being preoccupied with self, to thinking about the needs of others. I believe it also indicates that your child has developed a level of trust in your relationship.

If you have adopted children who are older... more

Do you ever wonder if this is what is going through your child’s head when you hear a reason that is so ridiculous that you don’t know whether to laugh or cry? “My parents are so stupid; they’ll never figure out that this is a lie.” Time after time, your child’s deception has been exposed, and yet “try, try, again seems to be the motto when it comes to concocting lies.” Do you wonder, perhaps even aloud, just how stupid does my child think I am?

I’m ashamed to admit that I have uttered these exact words quite often. I do realize that saying this doesn’t help the situation.... more

Our value as parents is not dependent on the outcome but on our input.

Said a wise friend of mine on a listserv post recently.

She was bolstering another parent who was questioning whether her current situation with her child (or the child himself) was ever going to get any better. She was encouraging this mom to reframe her situation and to consider that her value was not in how the child “turned out”, but in what she did for the child.

These are wise words, but nearly impossible to live... more

A commenter on Nancy’s blog yesterday asked that question of her. Nancy has blogged about “goodness of fit” before. How that some children and parents just click personality-wise and others don’t. Over the years that she has parented children, and supported hundreds of adoptive and foster parents through ATN, Nancy’s opinion has become that “goodness of fit” plays an active... more

Super Dad’s niece came to visit us last night with her dear hubby and two precious little girls. This morning she rose early and took a run while I shuttled Kay off to high school. Then we had a moment of time to chat and catch up on each others’ lives.

I asked her if she was still working (she has a master’s in social work), and she said she had quit her job when her husband got transferred this summer and plans to remain at home in the near future. “Even though I miss the income”, she explained, “I don’t miss the job itself.”

To... more