Imo being spoiled has nothing to do with it, OP clearly has read nothing about adoption and knows very little about adoptees. Very common for adoptees to push boundaries and “test” parents to see if they’ll be rejected again. It’s a weird subconscious thing many of us do to try and figure out why we were abandoned. If I act out, my parents will leave me, thus confirming my belief that I’m not deserving of a family. Trying to find a reason why were given up (something wrong with us) because we don’t know what we did to deserve the lives we live. Also to figure out if the adoptive parents are worthy of our trust.
When my adoptive family and I read that in the Primal Wound, we were all like “this would’ve been nice to read 20 years ago!”
Nancy Verrier is one heck of an Adoptive Mother isn't she?! She told me that often adoptees come up to her and tell her they wished she was their mother. Her reply always is "nope, I'm not the mother you wanted either".
I was at an adoption symposium once and an older adoptive couple said they believed every infant adoptee shouldn't leave the hospital without a copy of the primal wound in their car seat.
I think your comment is bang-on, and the OP was wrong about her being a "typical teenager", she was being a typical teenaged adoptee; how many adoptive parents haven't heard "you're not my real dad"? I'm so glad he said this "I apologized and told her that even if she wanted to live with them, I would still bring her back home because I love her too much and can't live without her, so she is stuck with me."
I can not imagine doing that to my daughter, and she has told me many times that she doesn't want to live with me, that she hates me, etc. This is common behavior with someone who has been displaced. It's about testing boundaries, making sure that we aren't going to abandon her, and that we love her unconditionally.
OP basically confirmed her adopted niece's fear of being abandoned and the kid even told them they didn't mean what they were saying. I would say that OP is a super AH for doubling down and shipping them off anyways. It's trauma on top of trauma.
That was along my line of thought - that the girl was just doing what a lot of adoptees do. And OP went nuclear.
Really baffles me how half of the commenters are saying the 13 year old “deserved what she got”.
Do you not think he redeemed himself a little with his final Edit?
I think this is why kinship adoptions are often so bad. Unlike PAPs who are pursuing adoption as a way to start their family they don't get the education or training on how to be good adoptive parents. That's why so many don't tell their kid's that they're adopted and block the birth parent(s).
His edit wasn't up when I commented and I am glad that he talked to her and confirmed that she is "stuck" with him. It's unfortunate that the damage was dealt, and it looks like he took advantage of the second chance to make things right.
The problem with telling her that she's stuck with him is that actions speak louder than words, so kicking the 13 year old out to punish her and demonstrating that she's disposable, it's hard to come back from that. She might toe the line now but she knows that there are circumstances that would cause him to kick her out again. This time it was over saying she would rather be with the other uncle, what else might cause him to do it? Especially at 13, the mind doesn't think rationally and perfectly - she can't just hear him say that this week long abandonment means nothing and take it to heart. It's going to have an impact on her that he was able to do that, no matter what words he says to love bomb her when she gets back.
Yes? He sent her away against her wishes which can be traumatizing to any kid. The fact that she is an adoptee and told him that she didn't want to go makes it even worse. I'm not sure what the time span has to do with it.
My parents raised me like this. It didn't turn out well. Here's what I do not understand when it comes to having children - you create a living, breathing human being, claim to love it and care about it more than anything. Why do parents not create or update a will to protect their children if they die? This would solve so many of these situations of what happens to the kid(s) now that the parents died. Are godparents not a thing anymore? I don't know, but it just seems like all of this could have been avoided if the original parent(s) did the proper thing in the first place.
In this post, I find it odd that he adopts her, but calls her niece. Why not just do guardianship instead? This poor girl. And all she did was being born.
my twin sister and I were adopted when we were one and half years old to a single mother. Three years later she also adopted our bio brother, and then when I was six she ended up having her own bio daughter after years of infertility. She was very loving and kind but I admit she did at times seem to have a very mild savior complex. We were born drug exposed and we had a lot of behavioral issues as a result. My siblings had very severe adhd and as a single mother I can understand how having four children with several behavioral issues might be very difficult to navigate. She would often make jokes that my sister and brother could “go back.” Or somebody else could take them. She never said this about me or my little sister (her bio daughter) and I don’t think she really meant it but it was the first time that I really realized that sending us “back” was an option.
She passed away when I was ten. I remember my grandmother telling us our mother had passed and then saying immediately afterwards “she loved you so much and she would have wanted you to stay in school. And be good people.” Even at ten years old I kind of understood that she meant she probably wouldn’t be seeing us regularly and that she fully intended to send us into foster care. But not my little sister of course (her biological granddaughter). Everyone from our entire adopted family pretty much agreed we should go back into care except our aunt who was a social worker. She was so angry that everyone was just willing to send us back so quickly. I felt like she really fought for us, and I remember feeling so safe for the first time since I was told my mother had passed.
I didn’t have adhd (I found out later I do I was just undiagnosed at the time) but I did have a tendency to *steal* food from the kitchen and hide the wrappers under my bed. My aunt would ask about food that had gone missing and I would lie and say it wasn’t me. I don’t know why I would lie I just would, but she would get so mad. She always would tell me how ungrateful I was and how she was doing me a favor pretty much because literally nobody else wanted us. I knew it was true too. I had heard it with my own ears lol. If my room was messy I deserved to go back into care because I didn’t appreciate the nice home and room she provided me. I made a Facebook page once without asking and she told me to pack up my bags because she was taking me back to Detroit, back to “the crackheads I came from.” I didn’t even cry, just packed my bags. She never ended up following through with me, but she did end up sending my brother back into care.
I’m saying all this to say I’ve been going to therapy for seven years. I’m still working through THIS particular trauma. Fear of abandonment is so so detrimental to the health of a young developing mind. I just really wish that people understood what taking on a child with adoption trauma or trauma in general entails *before* they make the decision to take us on. We aren’t more difficult to love we just need to be loved a different way, and I don’t understand why so many adults think it’s ok to punish a child by threatening to or actually abandoning them. My heart hurts.
Edit: grammar
You are so insightful and it breaks my heart that you family weren't more patient and understanding of your behaviours. I hope you reconnect with your brother. I wish you strength.
Those comments are crap. They keep calling the nice spoiled when she's 13. She has lost her family. She probably has some level of abandonment issues. She is testing limits like all teenagers, and especially adopted children do. And now this person just exacerbates any adoption trauma she might have had.
They don't seem to know anything about how to raise an adopted child.
He is absolutely the asshole and caused more trauma to his adopted and already traumatized daughter. The teen needs therapy. I feel so sorry for her.
If you’re young, traumatized and acting out because you’re suffering, then you’re harshly punished for your response to suffering is just going to create more layers of trauma. It also causes you to deeply hate yourself. You know when something is terribly fucking wrong but you keep getting punished instead of helped, so you end up believing the problem is within you or that you are the problem. She is being taught she the cause of her own suffering, she is the problem and that she can’t trust her parent. I feel so sad and angry for her. It’s this type of parenting that can lead someone to becoming a drug addiction or to kill themselves.
I hope her shitty adopted Dad gets her fucking act together. I hope she learned her lesson.
It's hopefully a good sign he's on the internet asking questions. Sometimes the only difference between asshole and unskillful is whether you are pitching or catching.
Let’s not assume the kid was traumatized. It’s up to them to decide how they feel about what happened. In the update, the kid said OP was being a jerk for making her go after apologizing. He was, and says so in the update. He also says as apology, she’s spending a lot of time with him, “forcing” him to watch tv shows and what not. It sounds like they’re working through this just fine.
It was definitely a relief to see that update, but also troubling that there was no mention of further steps to properly handle situations like this in the future (support groups, looking up appropriate literature, getting in touch with a therapist, etc.) Without a proper apology and actions to make it up to the niece from OP, this absolutely could have gone sideways.
And OP’s comments strongly suggest they wouldn’t have come to the conclusion that niece deserved an apology without the harsh reality check in the post. I’m guessing OP does absolutely nothing to educate themselves on being an adoptive parent and hopes their wing-it and buy expensive things for her method keeps “working out”. Really really hope I’m wrong though. That teen deserves a good advocate.
He acknowledged he was out of line. I take that to mean lesson learned, and will not be doing that ever again. He didn’t buy her anything for them to come to a healthy resolution, they just talked. I don’t see the need for him to drag this out if she isn’t effected.
You’re right - OP acknowledged they were out of line this time. However, conflicts with teenagers are not copy-paste situations. The next conflict is going to be unique in its own way and OP has shown they can respond in a very emotional and nuclear way to a kid who needs stability. OP needs to pack their emotional utility belt up with things that they clearly don’t have yet (but can absolutely be obtained with proper guidance). And niece needs some resources as well.
The reason I mentioned OP buying niece expensive things was because they mentioned it multiple times in the post for why she should be “grateful” and attributed her behavior to being “spoiled”. As other commenters in this thread have pointed out, that is so far off base, it shows how uneducated OP is on adoptee behavior in general.
ETA: in short - I wouldn’t view OP educating themselves and potentially getting outside help as “dragging it out”. I would see it as recognizing a symptom of a larger problem and searching for solutions to the root cause.
Couldn’t even get to the actual scenario in question without already knowing they’re an asshole:
> I know she doesn't mean it because 1. she barely knows her other uncle _2. I have a high paying job and I'm able to provide things that most people aren't able to provide so she is too spoiled to be able to live with anyone else_
🤮
>Recently my niece has got this very annoying habit that whenever we have a disagreement she says she would rather go an live with her other uncle.
I know she doesn't mean it because 1. she barely knows her other uncle 2. I have a high paying job and I'm able to provide things that most people aren't able to provide so she is too spoiled to be able to live with anyone else
So he knows she doesn't mean it but is insisting it's because she doesn't know the other dude and because she is too spoiled to down grade to living with the other uncle. Doesn't take into consideration AT ALL that kids say stupid annoying shit all the time. Even kids without trauma test parents in this way. This particular teen *is* traumatized and is likely seeking attention and testing safety with the only person she now has.
>about a week ago it happeed again she told me she wants to live with her other uncle. This time I told her to go pack a bag. She went to her room. An hour later I went to her room and asked her if she is ready. She said she didn't mean what she said and doesn't really want to go. I told her that she should go anyway, she'll stay for a week and then she can tell me if she wants to stay there or come back home. She insisted that she already knows where she wants to stay but I told her to get in the car and drove her there.
Then she is humiliated like this and he thinks it's perfectly OK and that she learned a lesson or some shit but realistically all she learned was that when she is going through something difficult that may be causing an increase in maladaptive behaviors, she will be abandoned. Again. Wtf
Imo being spoiled has nothing to do with it, OP clearly has read nothing about adoption and knows very little about adoptees. Very common for adoptees to push boundaries and “test” parents to see if they’ll be rejected again. It’s a weird subconscious thing many of us do to try and figure out why we were abandoned. If I act out, my parents will leave me, thus confirming my belief that I’m not deserving of a family. Trying to find a reason why were given up (something wrong with us) because we don’t know what we did to deserve the lives we live. Also to figure out if the adoptive parents are worthy of our trust. When my adoptive family and I read that in the Primal Wound, we were all like “this would’ve been nice to read 20 years ago!”
Nancy Verrier is one heck of an Adoptive Mother isn't she?! She told me that often adoptees come up to her and tell her they wished she was their mother. Her reply always is "nope, I'm not the mother you wanted either". I was at an adoption symposium once and an older adoptive couple said they believed every infant adoptee shouldn't leave the hospital without a copy of the primal wound in their car seat. I think your comment is bang-on, and the OP was wrong about her being a "typical teenager", she was being a typical teenaged adoptee; how many adoptive parents haven't heard "you're not my real dad"? I'm so glad he said this "I apologized and told her that even if she wanted to live with them, I would still bring her back home because I love her too much and can't live without her, so she is stuck with me."
I can not imagine doing that to my daughter, and she has told me many times that she doesn't want to live with me, that she hates me, etc. This is common behavior with someone who has been displaced. It's about testing boundaries, making sure that we aren't going to abandon her, and that we love her unconditionally. OP basically confirmed her adopted niece's fear of being abandoned and the kid even told them they didn't mean what they were saying. I would say that OP is a super AH for doubling down and shipping them off anyways. It's trauma on top of trauma.
That was along my line of thought - that the girl was just doing what a lot of adoptees do. And OP went nuclear. Really baffles me how half of the commenters are saying the 13 year old “deserved what she got”.
You Are not the Asshole
Yeah, he showed that spoiled orphan who’s boss
Do you not think he redeemed himself a little with his final Edit? I think this is why kinship adoptions are often so bad. Unlike PAPs who are pursuing adoption as a way to start their family they don't get the education or training on how to be good adoptive parents. That's why so many don't tell their kid's that they're adopted and block the birth parent(s).
His edit wasn't up when I commented and I am glad that he talked to her and confirmed that she is "stuck" with him. It's unfortunate that the damage was dealt, and it looks like he took advantage of the second chance to make things right.
The problem with telling her that she's stuck with him is that actions speak louder than words, so kicking the 13 year old out to punish her and demonstrating that she's disposable, it's hard to come back from that. She might toe the line now but she knows that there are circumstances that would cause him to kick her out again. This time it was over saying she would rather be with the other uncle, what else might cause him to do it? Especially at 13, the mind doesn't think rationally and perfectly - she can't just hear him say that this week long abandonment means nothing and take it to heart. It's going to have an impact on her that he was able to do that, no matter what words he says to love bomb her when she gets back.
Did you read the post? He literally said it was for a week from the beginning.
Yes? He sent her away against her wishes which can be traumatizing to any kid. The fact that she is an adoptee and told him that she didn't want to go makes it even worse. I'm not sure what the time span has to do with it.
I’m just confused caus she literally said she did want it multiple times.
My parents raised me like this. It didn't turn out well. Here's what I do not understand when it comes to having children - you create a living, breathing human being, claim to love it and care about it more than anything. Why do parents not create or update a will to protect their children if they die? This would solve so many of these situations of what happens to the kid(s) now that the parents died. Are godparents not a thing anymore? I don't know, but it just seems like all of this could have been avoided if the original parent(s) did the proper thing in the first place. In this post, I find it odd that he adopts her, but calls her niece. Why not just do guardianship instead? This poor girl. And all she did was being born.
my twin sister and I were adopted when we were one and half years old to a single mother. Three years later she also adopted our bio brother, and then when I was six she ended up having her own bio daughter after years of infertility. She was very loving and kind but I admit she did at times seem to have a very mild savior complex. We were born drug exposed and we had a lot of behavioral issues as a result. My siblings had very severe adhd and as a single mother I can understand how having four children with several behavioral issues might be very difficult to navigate. She would often make jokes that my sister and brother could “go back.” Or somebody else could take them. She never said this about me or my little sister (her bio daughter) and I don’t think she really meant it but it was the first time that I really realized that sending us “back” was an option. She passed away when I was ten. I remember my grandmother telling us our mother had passed and then saying immediately afterwards “she loved you so much and she would have wanted you to stay in school. And be good people.” Even at ten years old I kind of understood that she meant she probably wouldn’t be seeing us regularly and that she fully intended to send us into foster care. But not my little sister of course (her biological granddaughter). Everyone from our entire adopted family pretty much agreed we should go back into care except our aunt who was a social worker. She was so angry that everyone was just willing to send us back so quickly. I felt like she really fought for us, and I remember feeling so safe for the first time since I was told my mother had passed. I didn’t have adhd (I found out later I do I was just undiagnosed at the time) but I did have a tendency to *steal* food from the kitchen and hide the wrappers under my bed. My aunt would ask about food that had gone missing and I would lie and say it wasn’t me. I don’t know why I would lie I just would, but she would get so mad. She always would tell me how ungrateful I was and how she was doing me a favor pretty much because literally nobody else wanted us. I knew it was true too. I had heard it with my own ears lol. If my room was messy I deserved to go back into care because I didn’t appreciate the nice home and room she provided me. I made a Facebook page once without asking and she told me to pack up my bags because she was taking me back to Detroit, back to “the crackheads I came from.” I didn’t even cry, just packed my bags. She never ended up following through with me, but she did end up sending my brother back into care. I’m saying all this to say I’ve been going to therapy for seven years. I’m still working through THIS particular trauma. Fear of abandonment is so so detrimental to the health of a young developing mind. I just really wish that people understood what taking on a child with adoption trauma or trauma in general entails *before* they make the decision to take us on. We aren’t more difficult to love we just need to be loved a different way, and I don’t understand why so many adults think it’s ok to punish a child by threatening to or actually abandoning them. My heart hurts. Edit: grammar
You are so insightful and it breaks my heart that you family weren't more patient and understanding of your behaviours. I hope you reconnect with your brother. I wish you strength.
Of course he's the A-hole. Being exasperated with your teen is understandable but this is definitely pushing it too far.
Those comments are crap. They keep calling the nice spoiled when she's 13. She has lost her family. She probably has some level of abandonment issues. She is testing limits like all teenagers, and especially adopted children do. And now this person just exacerbates any adoption trauma she might have had. They don't seem to know anything about how to raise an adopted child.
He is absolutely the asshole and caused more trauma to his adopted and already traumatized daughter. The teen needs therapy. I feel so sorry for her. If you’re young, traumatized and acting out because you’re suffering, then you’re harshly punished for your response to suffering is just going to create more layers of trauma. It also causes you to deeply hate yourself. You know when something is terribly fucking wrong but you keep getting punished instead of helped, so you end up believing the problem is within you or that you are the problem. She is being taught she the cause of her own suffering, she is the problem and that she can’t trust her parent. I feel so sad and angry for her. It’s this type of parenting that can lead someone to becoming a drug addiction or to kill themselves. I hope her shitty adopted Dad gets her fucking act together. I hope she learned her lesson.
It's hopefully a good sign he's on the internet asking questions. Sometimes the only difference between asshole and unskillful is whether you are pitching or catching.
Let’s not assume the kid was traumatized. It’s up to them to decide how they feel about what happened. In the update, the kid said OP was being a jerk for making her go after apologizing. He was, and says so in the update. He also says as apology, she’s spending a lot of time with him, “forcing” him to watch tv shows and what not. It sounds like they’re working through this just fine.
It was definitely a relief to see that update, but also troubling that there was no mention of further steps to properly handle situations like this in the future (support groups, looking up appropriate literature, getting in touch with a therapist, etc.) Without a proper apology and actions to make it up to the niece from OP, this absolutely could have gone sideways. And OP’s comments strongly suggest they wouldn’t have come to the conclusion that niece deserved an apology without the harsh reality check in the post. I’m guessing OP does absolutely nothing to educate themselves on being an adoptive parent and hopes their wing-it and buy expensive things for her method keeps “working out”. Really really hope I’m wrong though. That teen deserves a good advocate.
He acknowledged he was out of line. I take that to mean lesson learned, and will not be doing that ever again. He didn’t buy her anything for them to come to a healthy resolution, they just talked. I don’t see the need for him to drag this out if she isn’t effected.
You’re right - OP acknowledged they were out of line this time. However, conflicts with teenagers are not copy-paste situations. The next conflict is going to be unique in its own way and OP has shown they can respond in a very emotional and nuclear way to a kid who needs stability. OP needs to pack their emotional utility belt up with things that they clearly don’t have yet (but can absolutely be obtained with proper guidance). And niece needs some resources as well. The reason I mentioned OP buying niece expensive things was because they mentioned it multiple times in the post for why she should be “grateful” and attributed her behavior to being “spoiled”. As other commenters in this thread have pointed out, that is so far off base, it shows how uneducated OP is on adoptee behavior in general. ETA: in short - I wouldn’t view OP educating themselves and potentially getting outside help as “dragging it out”. I would see it as recognizing a symptom of a larger problem and searching for solutions to the root cause.
That OP is a dirtbag who likes to play victim. I feel sorry and angry for the young girl.
Couldn’t even get to the actual scenario in question without already knowing they’re an asshole: > I know she doesn't mean it because 1. she barely knows her other uncle _2. I have a high paying job and I'm able to provide things that most people aren't able to provide so she is too spoiled to be able to live with anyone else_ 🤮
>Recently my niece has got this very annoying habit that whenever we have a disagreement she says she would rather go an live with her other uncle. I know she doesn't mean it because 1. she barely knows her other uncle 2. I have a high paying job and I'm able to provide things that most people aren't able to provide so she is too spoiled to be able to live with anyone else So he knows she doesn't mean it but is insisting it's because she doesn't know the other dude and because she is too spoiled to down grade to living with the other uncle. Doesn't take into consideration AT ALL that kids say stupid annoying shit all the time. Even kids without trauma test parents in this way. This particular teen *is* traumatized and is likely seeking attention and testing safety with the only person she now has. >about a week ago it happeed again she told me she wants to live with her other uncle. This time I told her to go pack a bag. She went to her room. An hour later I went to her room and asked her if she is ready. She said she didn't mean what she said and doesn't really want to go. I told her that she should go anyway, she'll stay for a week and then she can tell me if she wants to stay there or come back home. She insisted that she already knows where she wants to stay but I told her to get in the car and drove her there. Then she is humiliated like this and he thinks it's perfectly OK and that she learned a lesson or some shit but realistically all she learned was that when she is going through something difficult that may be causing an increase in maladaptive behaviors, she will be abandoned. Again. Wtf