[shy_bear]

something my 5 yr old got from her birthmom???? Little background; we have had her since she was released from the hospital at two days old. Birthmom is a person who has and still does have "trauma" in her life. She is the type of person who acts like the world is out to get her, yet does nothing to improve her situation. When you talk to her she always sounds like something horrible just happened to her. She had a bad life growing up, a very dysfunctional family, and she has VERY low self esteem.
5 year old is the type that if you tell her she looks nice she will tell you no I don't I look ugly. She always thinks everyone can do things better than her and is smarter than her. She is on the hyper active side; we don't think it is ADHD b/c she can turn it off when she wants to. She has asked some hard questions about her adoption at a young age. She has a VERY hard time making friends.
Not to say we are the great parent's; we have made our share of mistakes, but overall we are a good family and I don't understand where this behavior comes from. We are postive with her, we encourage her to do her best. We are waiting to talk to the teacher at parent/teacher conferences in the begining of Oct. and then we may move forward with starting counseling. I don't want her to go down a bad path later in life so my thought is if we can help her now that would be better.

So I guess my question still is can low self esteem be something that is inherited????

[NJNative]

I think counseling is a good idea. And not knowing your child, I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't rule out ADHD.

Kids with ADHD can -- and do -- have times when they focus on something intently. They almost have hyper-focus when they are interested in something. My son has ADHD and can seemingly "turn it off" but he definitely has it. Also be aware that kids with ADHD often have a very hard time making friends -- or keeping them. They don't read verbal and physical cues of the other children very well. Thanks to the lack of friendships, a lot of negative interaction with adults due to their hyperactive or flighty behavior, they also often have very low self-esteem.

I would consult with your pediatrician and then a counselor.

Good luck!

Robin

[SchmennaLeigh]

I would say yes, self-esteem can be inherited.

However, my question is this: if she had good self-esteem, would you credit your parenting? If she had good self-esteem, would you credit the firstmom? I'm not sure why it matters WHERE her self-esteem issues come from... but that you get her help as soon as possible. Poor self-esteem issues CAN lead, as you said, down bad paths, be they poor grades, eating disorders, drugs or whatever else.

Not sure why we need to play the blame game here. Seems unfair to all parents and isn't putting the focus where it needs to be: ON your beautiful little girl.

That said: my parents were amazing. (Minus some slip ups in later years that falls on both of our shoulders.) My parents had fairly decent self-esteem and were both successful. Yet, I went through a period of time where my self-esteem was so low that I ended up hospitalized with my eating disorder. Are my parents to blame? In my opinion: In no way, shape or form.

[ajjhmf]

Self-esteem is primarily an environmental thing. I think kids can have tendencies to be glass half-empty or glass half-full people, but that's more personality based. Many, many thing factor into self-esteem. I have good parents, but even today I have terribly low self-esteem. My parents told me repeatedly how proud they were of me, yet I have dealt with depression all of my adult life. I don't blame them. It's just part of me and my choices.

J, even with the stuff he;s been through in his life, is an eternal optimist. I take don't take credit for it, and I also don't give any to anyone else. It's just his make up. H and M are my bio kids. Their personalities are like night and day. Kids are all different, KWIM?

My advice would be to seek out counseling for your daughter if you are concerned. Talk to your pediatrician. See what you find.

Blessings,
Jenny

[loveajax]

Actually, to me low self-esteem usually is a sort of symptom of depression, which is a medical condition. And in that sense, whether birth mom has depression, etc. MAY be important as part of the child's medical history that a pediatrician likely will be interested in and may actually affect the approach taken by the doc. It's obviously not important for the purpose of "blame" or "credit" (and I don't think OP was suggesting that).

Sorry, meant to add: GOOD LUCK figuring it out and getting your DD the help that she may need.

[lisa in venice]

I am not sure it it is a self esteem issue as much as an EQ one. Emotional Quotient (sp?) is the part that helps people thru the rough times. One can have a genius IQ but if you don't have determination, patience, persistence and a positive attitude you will likely have a hard time in life. I do believe that those qualities are inherited just like intellegence. I also believe that those are things that can be mitigated. My oldest ds is just like your dd, negative about every thing or at least he used to be.

Over an entire childhood we pushed pulled and dragged him to activities that gave him the chance to find a passion and the expereince of seeing how sticking to something builds success. Also each activity came with a built in set of friends. I find it is easier for kids who are a little shy to make friends in situations where there are fewer kids and they are involved in something for short periods. In Scouts they did a project or learned something in a meeting which only lasted an hour. In dive team it was the same thing only they got to go to competitions together and that really helped bond the group (especially since there were only a handful of them). Lastly all of my kids have HAD to do community service. That is something that makes them feel good about themselves AND helps others. It can be as simple as going to the warehouse in your town when "One Voice" stuffs backpacks for homeless children, or serving a meal on Thanksgiving or setting up a giving tree at you church. Making sandwiches for a Habitat for Humanity crew with other kids. Those are not things that take any particular skill or ability but when you see how much even a little kid can accomplish it is really awesome.

Nathan did not become the social easy going kid he is now over night, it was years and years of little successes and frankly alot of the time I had to drag his negative butt to all of those things and it was very tiring. BUt eventually I started to notice that he was waking me up on Sat. ams to go to dive practice and HE was putting on his Scout uniform on Wed. evenings without being told, HE was terlling me what the date for the One Voice thing was and for the past three years he has stood up in our church to make all of the announcements for youth group community service stuff because he is now so passionate about it. That is so different from the little boy who always said "I can't do it" "I am terrible at this" etc. He is now the head prefect of his school, captain of the lacrosse team and while he is still not the brilliant scholar that we think he could be he has learned that we all have short comings and sometimes success is less about inate ability and more about just doing the work.

lisa

[numbr1dbcksfan]

I think that self-esteem is part of temperament.. which sure is pretty pre-determined. I think that things influence that... like for instance.. you may be encouraging.. but her temperament might be different than yours.. and she might recognize that she is not like that.

I think it is all just intertwined together. It is hard to describe why you feel a certain way.. if it is just something that is there... then we all -- I almost want to say no matter our temperament -- get caught up in our parents....and wanting to please them.

As someone who constantly struggles with this (and really I dont remember ever not struggling with it), I think that it is hard when you are looking at your model of what you feel you "should be" and you arent like that(even in my case.. where I SO should not be like her... as a kid you dont know that, so it is there). In that way it is sort of self-inflicted, even from a young age, I think, if you feel different than what you are looking at. (Im talking emotionally different not physically different.)

Im not so sure it is a cognition thing (faulty thinking) as it is a communication and understanding thing... (which is hard to figure out at a young age... then starts that cycle...that stays with you through life....)

JMO.

[shy_bear]

First off I AM NOT BLAMING ANYONE. I came here to get some opinions from others who have adopted and maybe could relate to my situation on a different level than my other friends who don't have adopted children.

I have spoke to our doc before. She thought I was being an over reactive mom and to make matters worse my husband agreed with her. So, we don't need our primary doc to be involved for us to start counseling so I was not going to go that path again.

She is involved in activities. Complains the whole time, but I tell her she wanted to sign up so she has to follow through. Right now she is in cheer and Girl scouts.

Other kids don't like to play with her. She is extremely loud and talks non stop. We debated about not putting her in kindergarten this year b/c I did not feel she was ready. Her prek teacher thought she was. She is VERY smart but does not sit still long enough to follow through with anything. She still at 5 will not even sit through a meal; she is antsy all the time.

Her birthfather has undiagnosed learning disablities and we are not sure with birthmom; she dropped out after the 8th grade.

[numbr1dbcksfan]

I dont think it sounds like you are blaming... at all.

What I think might be helpful for a second though, is this...

Read this.. as a mom on this site wanting to help others (Not even as an adoptive one, just a mom in general)

Other kids don't like to play with her. She is extremely loud and talks non stop. We debated about not putting her in kindergarten this year b/c I did not feel she was ready. Her prek teacher thought she was. She is VERY smart but does not sit still long enough to follow through with anything. She still at 5 will not even sit through a meal; she is antsy all the time.

It is pretty harsh.

It sounds like there is a communication barrier.. so you have identified what you see to be issues... could it be ADHD, sure... but it could also NOT be... it could be overcompensation... or overwhelmedness....

So take what you wrote and try to see... ok... so my way of communicating with her is not helping, and instead of trying to get her to "Get" what you are saying... try to figure out how to communicate with her on a level that is going to click in her head.

I dont think this even has to be an adoption issue... there are tons of families out there with children who just have a temperament that is so different than the parents, that it is frusterating.

But if you learn how to communicate with her... then she will learn how to communicate with you and take that with her through life.

It doesnt sound like there is any blame here.

[whitsunday15]

I am an adoptee who had low-self esteem growing up. I think that a lot of it stems from the fact that I was adopted. I know that the book "The Primal Wound" is debated in these forums, but the author does talk about self-esteem issues in adopted children. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that part of the problem stems from that.
Since being in reunion with my mom, I can tell you that we both share the same self-esteem issues. I agree with a previous poster though, that self-esteem goes hand in hand with temperament and personality--both of which are inherited.
I would encourage you to read books relating to behavior in adopted children.

[NJNative]

Originally Posted by shy_bear

Other kids don't like to play with her. She is extremely loud and talks non stop. We debated about not putting her in kindergarten this year b/c I did not feel she was ready. Her prek teacher thought she was. She is VERY smart but does not sit still long enough to follow through with anything. She still at 5 will not even sit through a meal; she is antsy all the time.

Her birthfather has undiagnosed learning disablities and we are not sure with birthmom; she dropped out after the 8th grade.

I know I will probably get blasted for this if I say it again. But you just described the typical child of 5 who has ADHD. Too loud, too rambunctious, too pushy, too antsy, can't sit still, hates organized activities because it forces them to follow along with the group, smart but can't follow a task through to completion. If you look up the symptoms, that would pretty much cover all of them. She probably has an exceptionally high-level vocabulary too.

PM me if you like. My own son, adopted at 10 months of age, has both ADHD (Inattentive subtype) and Learning Disabilities. He's also highly gifted. I've been down this road. At your daughter's age, he was also highly negative about himself, which is common in ADHD kids.

The good news is that at almost 16, he is now one of the most popular kids in his school with both students AND the faculty. BUt he attends a very small school for students with LDs, and it took us a lot of bumpy rides to get him settled where he is now.

Good luck!

Robin