[Anteee79]

I am new to the board so let me briefly introduce myself. My family dynamic is a bit complicated, but I see alot of different kinds of family in many of the posts so I feel you will understand. I have legal guardianship of my two nieces (14,17) and my nephew (13). I am also caregiver to my adopted siblings who are significantly younger, two sisters (12,6) and a brother (8)...they are all biological siblings but we got them at different times.
Three years ago my mother and I decided to combine households so we could support each other because we lived about 80 miles away from each other, so neither of us had backups locally in case of an emergency. This change has had several positives, but as you can imagine with 6 kids there is bound to be lots of chaos sometimes.
The current issue is with the 12 year old and I am hoping you guys can give us some advice. She was my mother's first foster child. We got her into foster care at 4 and she ws adopted at 9. When she first came into care we had major behavior issues with her, she was diagnosed with ADHD, she was kicked out of preschool due to her behavior, but we felt like she slowly reduced her tantrums and we were actually able to ween her off her ADHD medication 4 years ago. It seems like recently we are back to square one, but now she is 12 not 4 and she is so defiant and disrespectful that it causes us to have regrets about adopting her, hence the title "guiltridden". She tells us that she doesn't want to be apart of our family that she hates us and she doesn't understand why we adopted her. All of this of course is very difficult to hear and I will be honest and say that she pushes us to the point where we sometimes say mean things to her too. She is seeing a therapist and has recently been diagnosed with depression and a mood disorder and put on medication. We'll see if it helps, but I am a bit skeptical about kids and antidepressants. I just hate the way I feel. I am not her adoptive parent, but that is really just a technicality, because my mother and I both parent her. I encouraged my mother to adopt her despite all the issues because I knew she would be a difficult child to place and I felt if we hung in there things would get better. Right now we are just overwhelmed and we have 5 other kids to take care of, so I feel like we are just unable to give her the time she needs right now. In addition her behavior tends to trickle down to the younger ones and we just end up with a circus.

Is it wrong for us to to fell like we made a mistake? Has anyone every had these feelings?

Thoughts ...