[hotspice58]

Is this a likely scenario:

P, my 11 yo fs is going to be adopted on 11/15, National Adoption Day. Since hearing this, he's been acting out more than usual. A little background: he was sexually abused by bdad. He acted out and was sent to a group home in upstate New York for 2 years. Bmom visited him once (when DSS took her). He came to me the end of February; he has good and bad days but for some reason he's been acting out more than usual. Is this common?

[T-N-T]

For a minute put yourself in his shoes

Thing about what it would be like to be taken from your family and then told you were going to be living with another and may never see the old one again.

Remember he doesn't think like an adult. He may feel he is betraying his bio mom and dad even though they did bad things to him.

What's amazing is the loyalty these kids have to parents who could care less about them.

Many of the kids who experienced early trauma blame themselves for what happened.

So yes he may act out and it may get worse. He most likley will alwayt be affected by his adoption.

Find the book Primal Wound, it gives you a better insight into how being adopted can affect someone.

Does he talk about ** or bd at all?

Does he understand what happened to him and why he is with you?

What other types of behaviors are you seeing him display?

What type of therapy is/has he received?

Obvioulsy he has been through an extraordinary amount of trauma so you can expect behavioral issuses to surface for quite some time.

I wish you the best with him.

Be as procative as you can be about getting him help. Take any offered and demand the rest!

[Cristi727]

I too am adopting my boys 4 & 10 at a National Adoption Day Celebration in CA.

I was told that it is completly normal for older children, who understand what adoption is, to act out. In a way they are pushing your limits and boundries. They are seeing if you really want them. Afterall alot of older children think, "if my bio parents didn't want me, why would these people put up with me". So I was told to expect acting out behavior, and testing behavior for several months after the adoption.

My husband and I handle it by telling our soon to be adopted son that no matter what he does he is stuck with us. That we are a family through good times and bad. This just reinforces to our son that we care and that he is a huge part of our family.

I hope this helps,
Cristi

[momraine]

I also think that in order to feel safe these kids need to push the limits. They have to know how you react. How far can they push you before you yell, or hit, or send them away. Bio kids learn this early, by 3 they know how far to push before mom or dad gets really upset. They know if they will be hit, or or yelled at or just sent to thier room or time out. They know how the parents react when pushed. Adopted kids, especially older ones, don't know you, and don't yet know how you will expect. They may have had parents or parental figures (my adopted kids came from orphanages) who hit when they misbehaved, or worse. They may have changed homes and in the self centered world of a child they will beleive right or wrong that somehow they caused it. They may beleive that it was thier behavior that caused every change of homes. So to feel safe they really need to know that forever means forever.

[SAHmom]

I remember all too well the night we adopted our twelve year old {he was eight at the time}. He came home and urinated all over the wall, floor, etc. He had a habit of inappropriate peeing, but hadn't done it for a week. I was naive in thinking that he was healing...and then he did that! It gets better as he hasn't done it for over a year now!

[SheldeMuse]

Our 12 yo acted out in the months before finalization. As others have noted, it was more behavior we'd seen before. Verbal skills are a strength for her, so there was lots of looking for arguments and several threats to disrupt.

One other facet - when you finalize they are facing the first time in memory that a responsible adult is in charge of their lives. Our daughter worried what she was going to do when she couldn't threaten to call her social workers. Of course, we did our part by handing her the phone whenever she made the threat

We made rapid progress after finalization as she realized she would never need to depend on her birthfamily again. She has done excellent work of sorting through her feelings working from that security.

[zebramom]

As everyone else has said, acting out before adoption is pretty normal. The other thing to watch for is the anniversary in subsequent years, especially since it's right around a holiday. These days are very hard for our kids.

One Mom told me that her daughter thought that once she was adopted, she couldn't love her birth mother anymore.

The kids are conflicted.

Hang in there.