Any Success Stories or Do "Difficult Children" Ever Come Around?

[pigless in VA]

I did. What I mean is that I was a difficult child, I learned from my many mistakes and grew up.

When I was 17 I did a cannonball into the pool of adulthood. Some background is perhaps in order. My parents divorced when I was 12. Both of them became severely depressed to the point of abdicating their jobs as parents. My dad remarried (the Cactus Queen) and my mom brought the troll into our lives. She's still married to him.

Troll was the king of parties. This is where it gets truly weird. He had people at our house every night. They drank heavily and did drugs. Some were members of a biker gang. I honestly don't know how I even did my homework with the ruckus going on around me, but I did. I graduated from high school and did well. But my homelife was a disaster.

I only remember a couple of women coming to our house; the majority of the partiers were men. At 17 I felt terribly vulnerable with all these scary guys always hanging around. I made a conscious decision to make a big gorilla-like guy my boyfriend. He was 26. In hindsight it was not the stupidest thing I did; it probably did help a little. I became just like them. I drank constantly because that's what they were all doing. I stayed away from the drugs, because I really wanted to go to college. I also slept with a lot of the men. I think now that I was so lonely that the attention I received from them filled a void in my life. My family had disintegrated, and my parents had lives unrelated to mine. I had to create a life from the emptiness and the only people around to fill it were a bunch of drunks.

I did go to college. I began to realize while I was there that my parents were different from everyone else's parents. They didn't call or send care packages. They didn't visit. They really couldn't care less whether I was alive or dead. I managed to get a degree, but I gave up on my dream of becoming a veterinarian. I graduated in December and had to return to my mom's party house to live for awhile. I hated it. I lived with much nicer people in college, and I ran out of patience for the endless parties. I kid you not, living in a dorm was calmer than that house. They drank so much Jack Daniels that they decided to make a bar out of the empty bottles. It took them 2 weeks to gather enough bottles.

I moved out as soon as I could and met my first husband that spring. He was a biker but not in a gang. I thought he was nice. He really wasn't. I had to leave him later due to his abuse. While I was living with him, I realized that I really wasn't much like those people at all. When I left him, I left that life behind, all the people in it and the entire lifestyle. I got myself out, and I've never looked back.

At 17 my mom would have told anyone that I was wild, reckless and definitely a difficult child. I grew out of it. It took me a long time to realize that I didn't want to live that way. But I did figure it out. I supported myself, went to therapy, and learned how to choose better friends. It can be done.

 

[Nomad]

Our son was kind of a difficult child.
He had a crazy difficult year his last year in high school. It was very unexpected. I think it was combination of depression, anxiety and a difficult life event and it all came crashing down.
It got so bad, we had to send him to boarding school.
When he got back, we did mega tough love.
He got a good job, met some very nice people, got awards at work, enrolled in college and graduated with honors.
He then proceeded to get several awards at work.
NOT kidding.
A success story for sure.

Our adopted daughter is mentally ill.
Decades of big time difficulties.
She is an adult now.
I can't say the outcome is as good.
HOWEVER, I can tell you there is improvement.
She is on disability and has a roof over her head.
She chooses much better friends of late.
She is almost always polite with us (but at times falters)
She takes the bus to her doctor appointments regularly.
She takes her medications regularly.
She does her own grocery shopping.
She still struggles with bathing regularly, budgeting, overall decision making and fully understnding logical consequences....but teeny tiny increments of improvements have been made in all areas.

 

[Irene_J]

I found this board when my daughter was in grade school. She is now 28, a college graduate, has a responsible job and has her own apartment. I won't recount in detail her growing up years but I truly went through some nightmare years. This included tremendous rebellion and aggression, running away, police activity, early sexual activity, alcohol and marijuana use, stealing (from me and others) and pleading guilty to a felony. When she was supposed to be a junior in high school, she only had enough credits for a freshman.

I'm condensing quite a bit, but I finally accepted that I could not change her no matter how hard I tried. When I decided to let her go, by telling her that when she was 18, she was out of my house on that very day; she knew I meant it. We lived a small township with only one high school. Her classmates were planning for the prom and applying for colleges. I'll never forget her saying to me "I want to go to college too" and asked me for help. Because she had an IEP and because she was in trouble so much of the time, I knew the counselors and administrative staff well. We got the foreign language requirement waived, she took additional courses at another high school and I got her a private tutor to acquire more credits. She graduated on time (the principal hugged her when she accepted her diploma; he was a nice man and had tried to help her).

She had to go to community college first and after a few backward steps, I found a small Christian college in the South which was in the same city as my sister and her family. She graduated a few years ago.

She had to wait to apply for her "dream job" because they asked if the applicant had been convicted of a felony in the last 10 years. They offered her a position in a city about 5 hours away which she accepted. We talk everyday and visit each other about every other month. She is respectful, she tells me she loves me and she is the daughter I always knew was in there somewhere.

I've said this before on this board, but things didn't get fixed until I stopped trying to fix them. That was really my turnaround point. I was prepared to let her go to any life she wanted, no matter how much it would have hurt. The other important point is that she changed her circle of friends. I asked her once if she knew what happened to a few of those friends. From Facebook she said she knew two of the girls became mothers as teenagers and two of the guys have been incarcerated.

My daughter refers to those nightmare years as her "rebellious years" minimizing them as though she only sneaked cigarettes or something. Those years were horrible. But we came out okay on the other side. It would have hurt to have lost her, but I believe I still would have come out okay once I accepted that I could not change her.

 

[Littleboylost]

Once again forced to a cross road. Our 29 year old son has been a nightmare. We have enabled him in every step of the way. He has lived in my mother's villa for almost 5 years just paying association dues, light,water not much at all. The association has been threatening him for 3 years to park his truck in the garage. Well it finally happened, he is being evicted. He has horrible credits, no license because he failed to pay for his car insurance. He does work but spends all his money weekly. He has to pitbulls he rescued off the streets and now I am mortified as to what is going to happen to those dogs. I am sure he will show up at our door soon enough. This is the first time I have ever joined a group or really talked about it to anyone outside of my family. Any advice would be appreciated

Stop enabling him he is 29 he has to figure this out on his own. As long as you enable him he will be in this rut. There are animal shelters for his dogs. Love and don't enable it's a very fine line.

 

[Nomad]

Rosenbergio...I think a turning point came for me many years ago when I had to ask my Higher Power to simply take this from me. Why? It was beyond my control. I was giving over 100% and this resulted in damage to my health and no improvement for our daughter, in particular. I think, probably when they turn 18 and absolutely positively when they turn 21, it is very important to find the inner strength to let go. When my children were willing to at the very least by respectful, obey the law and meet me half way, I would provide SOME minimal assistance.

I've perused some of these stories (I will go back and read them all later) and I see there is much wisdom to found within them.

Also, at times, I had to get therapy for myself because having a child like this (even if they are not so young anymore) is VERY taxing.

Take extra good care of yourself.

Mamato3... Take heart. There are definitely some success stories!