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difficult child Home from First Semester at College
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<blockquote data-quote="Nancy" data-source="post: 571767" data-attributes="member: 59"><p>Weary your story is very similar to mine, and Calamity Jane I had no idea our storys were so alike. I too adopted our daughter and from very early on she loved to accentuate her differences from us and easy child. She would say things like, "I'm not like you", "I came from a different mom". And she was different in so many ways. She was not born with the moral compass that the rest of the family has. She loves tatoos which none of us have and her bm has many (she has never met or seen her bm to know this), she loves risk taking behaviors, she is extremely impulsive, she swears something awful, she smokes, (none of us do, in fact none of her extended family of well over 35 people smoke), she gravitates to low life people, she drank underage and smoked pot and tried many other drugs, she was very disrespectful to us and at times violent when she didn't get her way, she did no studying in high school and just got by with the least effort, she continually got into trouble from second grade on, she rejected everything we believe in.</p><p></p><p>She went to college about an hour away three years ago. By six weeks she had been caught and arrested for drinking and smoking pot on campus and had to attend substance abuse classes and do community service. She had to go before the discipline review board and was not invited back after the semester. We enrolled her in community college and she lasted maybe a month before she found every pothead in the school and started skipping classes and flunked out. So that was another tuition wasted. She ended up in a residential treatment center for substance abuse and lived in a sober house for 6 months at the age of 19.</p><p></p><p>We ended up not letting her come back home and she has been living on her own now for the past year and a half. She has gotten fired from every job she had for stealing or breaking their rules. She is now a server at a sports bar and living in a very depressed part of town with high crime. She loves telling us stories about all her neighbors who have criminal pasts. She was caught shoplifting in Oct and is now doing 72 hours of community service.</p><p></p><p>I don't regret sending her to college even though it ended up costing us a lot of wasted money. We had to try it. If we had not I would always be sorry that I didn't give her ther same opportunity we gave her sister who ended up graduating summa *** laude and is now a kindergarten teacher. She had the same opportunities as her sister and yet she made far different choices which will follow her the rest of her life. It took me a long time to learn how to detach from her behavior. I love her unconditionally and always will but I hate her behavior. I was embarrassed for neighbors to find out what she was doing and thought they would blame us. Now I have truly reached a level of detachment where I can love her for who she is and be sad for what she has lost but not obsess over what will never be.</p><p></p><p>I hope your son turns around at some point but know that so much of how he is acting was determined by his genetic makeup when he was born and there are things that you just will not be able to change. But that didn't stop us from trying to give our difficult child the guidance and support that she needed to make better choices. The fact that she hasn't taken advantage of that is not because we didn't try. There were some things she just could not overcome.</p><p></p><p>I will tell you that we have a very good relationship now. Since she is living on her own our house is much more peaceful. We see her on holidays and when she comes for a visit. She is nicer to us that she has ever been in the past. I think the farther away she gets from us the more she realizes how much we love her and how much we have been there for her. I just got done doing all her laundry over Christmas and bringing some old furniture to her apartment and making some curtains for her windows. She doesn't pay her utilities until they are shut off and she is on food stamps and has no health insurance but she seems to like living that way, at least she will not do what she needs to do to live differently at this point.</p><p></p><p>You may have to let things play out a bit longer. If he flunks out of school you will have to make a decision. We could not have our difficult child living her and not going to school and drinking and smoking pot and not working. But there does not seem to be much you can do in the meantime to change who he is becoming. He may need some maturity before he finds himself. We tried so hard to make our difficult child into something she was not.</p><p></p><p>Nancy</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Nancy, post: 571767, member: 59"] Weary your story is very similar to mine, and Calamity Jane I had no idea our storys were so alike. I too adopted our daughter and from very early on she loved to accentuate her differences from us and easy child. She would say things like, "I'm not like you", "I came from a different mom". And she was different in so many ways. She was not born with the moral compass that the rest of the family has. She loves tatoos which none of us have and her bm has many (she has never met or seen her bm to know this), she loves risk taking behaviors, she is extremely impulsive, she swears something awful, she smokes, (none of us do, in fact none of her extended family of well over 35 people smoke), she gravitates to low life people, she drank underage and smoked pot and tried many other drugs, she was very disrespectful to us and at times violent when she didn't get her way, she did no studying in high school and just got by with the least effort, she continually got into trouble from second grade on, she rejected everything we believe in. She went to college about an hour away three years ago. By six weeks she had been caught and arrested for drinking and smoking pot on campus and had to attend substance abuse classes and do community service. She had to go before the discipline review board and was not invited back after the semester. We enrolled her in community college and she lasted maybe a month before she found every pothead in the school and started skipping classes and flunked out. So that was another tuition wasted. She ended up in a residential treatment center for substance abuse and lived in a sober house for 6 months at the age of 19. We ended up not letting her come back home and she has been living on her own now for the past year and a half. She has gotten fired from every job she had for stealing or breaking their rules. She is now a server at a sports bar and living in a very depressed part of town with high crime. She loves telling us stories about all her neighbors who have criminal pasts. She was caught shoplifting in Oct and is now doing 72 hours of community service. I don't regret sending her to college even though it ended up costing us a lot of wasted money. We had to try it. If we had not I would always be sorry that I didn't give her ther same opportunity we gave her sister who ended up graduating summa *** laude and is now a kindergarten teacher. She had the same opportunities as her sister and yet she made far different choices which will follow her the rest of her life. It took me a long time to learn how to detach from her behavior. I love her unconditionally and always will but I hate her behavior. I was embarrassed for neighbors to find out what she was doing and thought they would blame us. Now I have truly reached a level of detachment where I can love her for who she is and be sad for what she has lost but not obsess over what will never be. I hope your son turns around at some point but know that so much of how he is acting was determined by his genetic makeup when he was born and there are things that you just will not be able to change. But that didn't stop us from trying to give our difficult child the guidance and support that she needed to make better choices. The fact that she hasn't taken advantage of that is not because we didn't try. There were some things she just could not overcome. I will tell you that we have a very good relationship now. Since she is living on her own our house is much more peaceful. We see her on holidays and when she comes for a visit. She is nicer to us that she has ever been in the past. I think the farther away she gets from us the more she realizes how much we love her and how much we have been there for her. I just got done doing all her laundry over Christmas and bringing some old furniture to her apartment and making some curtains for her windows. She doesn't pay her utilities until they are shut off and she is on food stamps and has no health insurance but she seems to like living that way, at least she will not do what she needs to do to live differently at this point. You may have to let things play out a bit longer. If he flunks out of school you will have to make a decision. We could not have our difficult child living her and not going to school and drinking and smoking pot and not working. But there does not seem to be much you can do in the meantime to change who he is becoming. He may need some maturity before he finds himself. We tried so hard to make our difficult child into something she was not. Nancy [/QUOTE]
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