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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BusynMember" data-source="post: 660078" data-attributes="member: 1550">Copa, except for giving you money when she died, your mother was not any nicer than mine. Mine would have said the same thing. So no matter if you loved your mother or not, for whatever reason, just being your  mother...she was probably a horrible influence on your self-esteem your entire life. And if she had the brain God gave a goose (sorry...she may be very educated, but that doesn't make somebody have insight) she would have realized that the child came to you with special challenges that you had nothing to do with.Did you get pregnant and drink and take drugs? I don't think so.That's on his birthmother. Did you cause his brain injury? I doubt it. These are very much why he is who he is and love can not change that. Good parenting can't change that. Let me give you further examples.I am the type who likes to join groups so naturally I joined groups from both countries where my daughter and son were born (they are seperate Asian countries). I also joined a parent group for those who adopted older children from the U.S. It is all the same. We think we can love them enough and they will be fine. We disregard DNA, drug and alcohol ingested in the womb, and possibly inherited mental slowness or mental illness because if we love them enough we will be the Brady Buch. And it never works out that way. Kids who spent years in an orphanage getting no love and holding are like me...my mother did not nurture m e as an infant, did not hold me, did not like me, did not protect me...and your son was he same until he was almost two years old plus he had drugs and alcohol affected his brain. Not being loved at those early ages changes the wiring in the brain. I addressed that in one of my above posts. The changes are permanent. We can feed, clothe them, educate them the best we can and love them to pieces, but we can not undo the damage they came with. Almost all stories I've heard through the years about adopted older children are sad stories. Infant adoption is different, UNLESS the infant was also bathed in drugs and alcohol in utero or the birthmother didn't eat. Chances are the birthmother had no prenatal care either. These things are not on you. You can't change them, no matter how much you loved him. My son I adopted at six was and is brilliant and was able to articulate that he could not adults.  He knew about attachment disorder and thought he might have it. He felt out of place being his ethnicity in a white world. I didn't have any friends of his ethnicity and he cared very much about his heritage. He married a woman who is the same heritage as him and they live that culture.My daughter, who came as a baby, doesn't care that much about her ethnicity and married or had her baby with a white guy. My adopted kids who are part black aren't into black either. But Goneboy was into his culture and he missed it when he was forced to come here. Even though many of his peer friends from the orphanage also came here (and mostly did horribly). He lost touch as everyone went seperate ways. We met once a year at a picnic for kids from this country and they acted like strangers. We were not enough for this child. He had too many issues, even though he did not have mental illness or other challenges. He is a Hep. B carrier but he doesn't drink at all (very religious) and his liver is fine. But he still could not feel at home in a country where he was different and curious and too smart not to wonder. He has found his entire birth family on FB and I think he has gone there a few times to see them. How close they are, not sure. Anyway, knock it out of your head that your son is your fault. He had so many factors before you even heard about him. He was different. You loved him. It  couldn't save him. It usually can't unless you get the kid as an infant and his birthparents did not indulge in drinking and drug use. The first rejection was there. We don't like to think about it, but all adopted kids have another mother and father. And even if we get snippy and don't allow them to talk about them (I always allowed them to talk about them), they think about them a nd w hy they were sent away and our stories don't always work. Your mother has no business telling you about your parenting skills when she didn't have any herself.But, of course, they do. Mine never had that chance. We were separated quite a lot by my 30s and had pretty low contact and she did not ever want to see her grandchildren that were mine so she had no opportunity to comment on my parenting. If she had, I would have thrown it back in her face. I was abused, but not always a wallflower. Tick me off enough and I'll get very angry at you right back. And that is why, I think, FOO REALLY didn't like me. I didn't sit and take it quietly. It hurt me very badly, but I wouldn't take it by shutting down. So many things to think about.Hope you stop blaming yourself for your son's behavior. He started out in the hole and you did as much as you could to help him thrive. Now it has to be up to him. He knows how to at least get a job and his own place if he wants to and he knows better than to use drugs.And your mother had no right to tell you ANYTHING about parenting.</blockquote>

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