Chocolate, you did not deserve what you have received. Our ED is our adopted child ( 3 when adopted). . My 3 sons are not adopted. You did a very courageous and generous act in adopting these teens. These teens had much baggage when they came into your life. Our ED did also. We had much counseling about it. What has taken place is not your fault and you can not change it. The only thing we can do is pray one day these EC will truly come to God and desire to have a peaceful relationship with family. God led you to do what you did. So many times in life we all look back and say that our lives could have taken a different road but we followed what we believed to be God's plan.

We must with God's help accept the reality of what is now. We must pray that God give us His Shalom to move ahead one step at a time and put our EC in His hands. Only He can change things. Until then, we should not enable these EC or accept anything except respect. That is God's way. I pray one day your EC will show you the gratitude that you deserve. God bless you.

None of us here deserve the treatment we have gotten or are getting.....

Chocolate you did a good thing...the present results are not feeling good but you know and we know you tried your best...

Blessings to you

AllK

Thank you again lindajoan and AllK. I do need to work on accepting the reality of the realization that the "dream" has died and what is now. I think I'm in some kind of grieving process. I think others have remarked on that - the catch being that the EC are not dead so we don't get the consolation that it feels like we need. I feel like I'm navigating a mine field now. Do we tell "X & Y?" "Can we trust them?" Do we get off social media, what about old friends on there? What plans do we make? What invitations to we accept? I hate having a complicated life with complicated relationships. Honest, kind, do the right thing - that's how I was raised. I don't have a single kid that lives by this. We did give it our absolute best. We are baffled and stunned by the outcome so far and don't see any signs of things improving, just see things getting worse daily, today it was hourly. It is like watching the proverbial train wreck. "Friends" who don't get it are telling us to smile and wave at the train......my logical brain just won't let me.
Lord give us all wisdom. Thank you again. Blessings.

It is absolutely a grieving process. The hard part is there is no closure. Do not try to answer all the questions of how to handle things at one time. Ask God step by step. He will lead you. Do not rush. Many people do not understand estrangement. We do here. It does not make sense. Us good parents who should be treated the best by our EC are treated the worst.

After 2 1/2,years it is still sad but in a different way. I see how much our ED has lost out in by her bad choices. I pray each day that God will bring the prodigal back to him and back to family. Most unbelievers do not think she will change. I do not know for sure but I do know God is able.

God bless you with His peace and comfort.

Oh, I am so sorry. I have felt this as well. It's hard and grievous thing. Praying for you!

You are not alone in your feelings. Praying for you and all of us. Blessings

Chocolate, I do not blame you for feeling the way you do about your three adopted EC's. I think a lot of parents on these Forums feel the same way, even if they don't admit it openly like you did. And no one has gotten hit by lightening over it, as far as I can tell.

Just like lindjoan said, your teenage adopted children came with a lot of baggage already in place that you had nothing to do with. There is usually very serious reasons why any teenager would be up for adoption. Even under the best of circumstances teenagers can be a challenge. It is very brave and risky adopting one teenager, let alone three. They do not realize how lucky they were to be adopted as teenagers with baggage intact. I can't help but think it also has something to do with the entitlement generation and so many negative influences out there on TV, movies, DVD's, social media, violent electronic games, etc.

I am sorry for all the grief and unhappiness these three ungrateful adopted EC's brought you in exchange for you opening up your hearts and your home to them and giving them a second chance in life. They blew it big time. It is their loss. 12 years of grief is enough. You gave it your best and I hope you find comfort in knowing that. God bless.

Chocolate - irregardless of how bad it is now, you and your DH did a wonderful thing in adopting those 3 teenagers. God loves when we reach out and you really reached out. But God is not happy with the way your adopted children are treating you now.

Maybe give them space, don't contact them and if they contact you, give them boundaries. In the meantime, look for joy every day in what you and your DH are doing, whether it is your jobs, friends, extended family, hobbies, travel, etc.

And keep praying for God's direction. You are in my prayers.

I'm not a psychiatrist and this theory may not apply to all, but I think some children take out their hatred of themselves on the people that love them the most. And in my case the person who brought them into this world.

weepingwillow.... I agree with you. My mother used to tell me when I was mean to my sister "you would never treat your friends that way because they wouldn't like you any more but you can be mean to your sister because you know she will always love you." Her philosophy was that we hurt the ones we love the most.

Much of the time, the pain seems overwhelming. My heart aches for you and all of your troubles. So glad you are here with us since this is the one place where people understand us. My situation is a little different than yours in that I have gotten to the point of cutting off FB since all our ES did was to use it for abuse and pain.However, our GC are old enough to remember us and my hope is in one day reuniting with them. You did such a loving thing by adopting 3 teenagers which I am sure most of us would not be able to do. You gave them love, values and all the important things in life yet they were not able to accept that and have made your lives miserable. Yes, we will always love them unconditionally but at some point, we need to set bounds to protect ourselves to some extent. Our ES uses FB as a weapon of abuse and pain. This weekend I cut that off as a protective device. I found myself every day looking for something positive only to be hurt again and again. My prayers are with you that God may give you His Peace and hold you in His everlasting arms. We will make his together supporting one another. It sure doesn't seem that way at times but our God is greater than all of this and He will sustain us. We are here for you.

Thank you all. I do believe that our kids take out on us the issues that they could never address with their birth parents. We were understanding of that for so long but now that we moved and they are very much adults I guess we were expecting more clarity on their parts. Instead they just heap more blame on us. If I were to hear somebody tell me our story I would think "gee, taking kids at their age, you should be glad they aren't all in jail or dead." Ours appear "normal" enough to elicit lots of praise but under the surface, and what we get, is the very messed up side that would like to punish somebody, us, for what they went through in their childhood. They do assume we can take it all. We are just at the point where we cannot take it all anymore. We were just hanging on looking for that light at the end of the tunnel and that light disappeared. We don't see any good signs coming from any of the 3. We are utterly discouraged and I feel we made a well meaning but naïve mistake in taking them all on. We had no idea of the spiritual issues that they brought with them into our home. Very serious and heavy stuff. We have been in a battle for years now. Our dreams of what our Christian lives and home were going to be like are gone. We are too weary for other ministry and maybe like some of you feel like we'll be ostracized if anyone knows our story. We are in a new place now and talk about our EC only if we have to. They are all back where we moved from garnering more pity from all we left behind. They thrive on pity. It seems to open doors for them.

Anyhow! When I read all of your different stories I am really so humbled by what it must feel like to have given birth to or raised from a young age a child who rejects you. I can't imagine the pain of that. I knew we'd have issues with one of ours after a few years but never guessed that the end result is all of them resenting us. Unreal. I have two emails pending reply of apparently well-meaning people who are kicking a couple of "horses" who are down. I don't feel like validating them for doing that to us right now. They both know us well enough that they should be showing understanding and compassion, but instead they are being self-righteous and butting in. If I don't reply to these, I'll keep getting pestered by one and the other, well that would probably just end the "friendship" and she'll just call me "passive aggressive" or something. I just don't have the gracious words right now to reply to either, and I kind of feel like they don't deserve them. So instead, I'm rambling on here venting all my frustrations! No, really I just read and reread all your comments and was actually very encouraged. Very encouraged, even though it might not sound like it. Thank you all again very very much.

You do not owe anyone an explanation. Some people thrive on drama, others are judgmental. You can kindly let them know that it is too hurtful right now to discuss it. They would not understand anyway, I 'm afraid. You did your best. We all tried our best. We pray that one day they will be reached by God.

Right! I'd sort of forgotten that I don't owe explanations! I just now sent an email with no explanations to get that off my mind. It was nice, polite, with no explanations! People are just looking for gossip sometimes too and from experience I know that this person is just looking for that. Didn't give it to them, but got that email reply off my mind too. Thanks for the reminder, lindajoan! I need to write this stuff down.......