Adoptive parenting

I think this is the best place to put this post, even though we really aren't step parents. DH and I are adopting my niece (one of my sister's 3 kids). My sister and her husband's parental rights were terminated. It's been a long, hard process, with a lot of grieving for everyone, not the least of which is her kids.

Elizabeth just turned 11. I have been close to her since she was a baby. DH just met her three years ago, and only spent any significant amount of time with her this last year.

I know she will never see us as her parents. We will always be Nini and Uncle Paul. That makes me a bit sad, but I can deal with it.

She is starting to push boundaries now. We are still negotiating our new relationship as parent-child. But Paul has a hard time. She treats him like a playmate. He does not feel respected, but he also does not feel empowered to do anything about it. He has little experience with pre-teen girls. He gets angry at some of her behavior, but doesn't tell her when she does something wrong. When he talks to me, I tell him he needs to tell her so that she will know. He seems to think she knows when she is pushing the envelope and does it intentionally. I think she does it without thought, and needs the feedback so she can learn where the lines are drawn.

I'm also beginning to think she is borderline ADD. Not hyperactive, just attention issues. I don't think she needs meds, but I will be researching other ways of helping her focus before she starts middle school next year. She cannot keep "forgetting" to bring important things home, like the data for her science project due the next day. I grounded her for that (it was the last in a long line of irresponsible "forgetting"). I ended her grounding today. Was that the right response? Is it too much to expect a kid her age to remember things like that? Was she grounded long enough? I don't know. There's so much to figure out about raising a teen girl, and we don't have much time to do it.

She is very bright, but I worry that all the trauma she went through and that she won't talk about, will come back and bite us in the a** as she enters puberty. But that's a subject for another post, another day.

Re: Adoptive parenting

Thanks again everyone. To answer a few questions, Elizabeth just finished 5th grade and will start middle school in the fall. She is not in counseling now, and does not want to be. She was in counseling while she was in foster care, and I think she really did not like it. She says she is over things, and just wants to move on and be happy. But, we all know that you never really get over things like this.

I would think she just doesn't want to talk about it now, but she does sometimes talk about things with my mom (her grandmother) that she doesn't say to me. I never realized how hard it would be to know she won't talk to me about something but she will to my mom. I think she puts on a bit of a show with us, afraid to say much about the past in case it hurts us or makes us mad since we are taking care of her instead of her parents.

I do talk about her with my therapist, who agrees that she may be borderline ADD. When we finally get a copy of her case file, my therapist will review the psych evaluations CPS did and help us figure out what we need to do next.

In the meantime, we are hoping the adoption will be final within the next month (so many delays). Once it is final, I am hoping that will let Elizabeth relax some, knowing that CPS cannot take her away any more.