N
notnowkids
Guest
I am thrilled that I found this forum!
Please allow me to fill you in a little on our situation: My husband and I have been married for about two and a half years. He came into the marriage with a 4-yo daughter (now 6) from his previous marriage. I adopted her in July 2009. We also have a 17-mo daughter and one on the way (due in June).
difficult child's problems started ... to be honest, I'm not entirely sure. husband was a single parent for about 3 years, and his job was really demanding, so he wasn't really present. When we married, I became a stay at home mom, and I noticed problems immediately. At first, we brushed them off as typical preschooler behavior, her adjusting to having a woman in the house, the fact that I'm not her bio mom, and just general family restructuring. As time wore on, though, her behavior became worse: she would throw massive tantrums over the slightest issues; she would hit and kick at us (most memorably while I was pregnant with easy child ... she aimed at my stomach); she never listened to us, to the point that we once stripped her room of everything expect the bed because she flat-out refused to pick up her toys).
We were still maintaining our sanity (kind of) until about four months ago. We moved to the East Coast for husband's job, and we expected some adjustment issues. We did not, however, expect the dramatic dip in grades, the violent behavior towards easy child, the mounting disrespect towards us, and the passive behavior that she was exhibiting. Finally, we got an evaluation from her teachers that, frankly, floored us. We knew things weren't phenomenal at school, but we didn't realize that her teachers were up to their necks in her crappy attitude and performance. That prompted us to seek counseling.
She was diagnosed with ODD, and we are into our fourth week of therapy. So far, we really haven't seen any improvement ... I suppose that's to be expected. Rome wasn't built in a day, right?
I can't lie, I'm relieved that we got a diagnosis instead of a brush-off. For a while, I really thought that I wasn't cut out to parent and that we were just dealing with a normal, albeit strong-willed, child. At least now we know that she has issues and can start working on them.
The therapy, though, is causing me more anxiety than I thought. I was up past midnight last night worrying about today's session and how we're going to be evaluated as parents and as a family. Right now, we're only supposed to be working on offering more praise for compliant behavior, but it's so seldom that we haven't really been able to demonstrate that. Additionally, whenever we do recognize her good behavior, she takes it as license to do something terrible almost immediately afterward. It's almost like she's thinking, Hey, I just did something great, so you can't get mad at me for doing this bad thing because I was JUST being good. So there.
I guess ... well, that's more than just an introduction, but I really need to talk to people who are going through similar situations. husband and I try to talk about it, and we do, but it's hard to be perfectly honest about how I feel because she's NOT my bio daughter, and if I get too upset, he gets protective. I respect that, and frankly, I'm glad that he's so protective of his daughters, but sometimes I just need to talk about what a jacka$$ she's being.
Please allow me to fill you in a little on our situation: My husband and I have been married for about two and a half years. He came into the marriage with a 4-yo daughter (now 6) from his previous marriage. I adopted her in July 2009. We also have a 17-mo daughter and one on the way (due in June).
difficult child's problems started ... to be honest, I'm not entirely sure. husband was a single parent for about 3 years, and his job was really demanding, so he wasn't really present. When we married, I became a stay at home mom, and I noticed problems immediately. At first, we brushed them off as typical preschooler behavior, her adjusting to having a woman in the house, the fact that I'm not her bio mom, and just general family restructuring. As time wore on, though, her behavior became worse: she would throw massive tantrums over the slightest issues; she would hit and kick at us (most memorably while I was pregnant with easy child ... she aimed at my stomach); she never listened to us, to the point that we once stripped her room of everything expect the bed because she flat-out refused to pick up her toys).
We were still maintaining our sanity (kind of) until about four months ago. We moved to the East Coast for husband's job, and we expected some adjustment issues. We did not, however, expect the dramatic dip in grades, the violent behavior towards easy child, the mounting disrespect towards us, and the passive behavior that she was exhibiting. Finally, we got an evaluation from her teachers that, frankly, floored us. We knew things weren't phenomenal at school, but we didn't realize that her teachers were up to their necks in her crappy attitude and performance. That prompted us to seek counseling.
She was diagnosed with ODD, and we are into our fourth week of therapy. So far, we really haven't seen any improvement ... I suppose that's to be expected. Rome wasn't built in a day, right?
I can't lie, I'm relieved that we got a diagnosis instead of a brush-off. For a while, I really thought that I wasn't cut out to parent and that we were just dealing with a normal, albeit strong-willed, child. At least now we know that she has issues and can start working on them.
The therapy, though, is causing me more anxiety than I thought. I was up past midnight last night worrying about today's session and how we're going to be evaluated as parents and as a family. Right now, we're only supposed to be working on offering more praise for compliant behavior, but it's so seldom that we haven't really been able to demonstrate that. Additionally, whenever we do recognize her good behavior, she takes it as license to do something terrible almost immediately afterward. It's almost like she's thinking, Hey, I just did something great, so you can't get mad at me for doing this bad thing because I was JUST being good. So there.
I guess ... well, that's more than just an introduction, but I really need to talk to people who are going through similar situations. husband and I try to talk about it, and we do, but it's hard to be perfectly honest about how I feel because she's NOT my bio daughter, and if I get too upset, he gets protective. I respect that, and frankly, I'm glad that he's so protective of his daughters, but sometimes I just need to talk about what a jacka$$ she's being.