“What do I do? It seems like that instead of being appreciated for taking on kids no one wants, I get looked down on like I'm at fault for doing the best I can with no help. I'm happy to be his mom, to stick with him no matter what, to be supportive, hold him accountable, whatever it takes, but I don't know what to do with him now, not even while I'm looking for help. If you, or some of the other adoptive parents out there, who have been there and done this, have got some advice or suggestions…”

I often receive emails from acutely distressed parents of older adopted children. I’m starting to feel like the Dear Abby of difficult adoption and the subsequent parenting experience. The obvious reply is that I have no answers. I don’t know what to do. I’m as lost as everyone else. We have chosen a long, dark way in which people think we’re stupid for even trying to make a difference.

I intensely feel everyone’s pain and I totally understand their deep, overwhelming frustration. Sometimes I simply hope that they feel better just by unloading to me. I feel better after I blog, especially since I know that my audience consists of mainly parents like me.

This is a very hard life.

Yet I’m more fortunate than many folks, in that I do have some wonderful grown children, all adopted as older children, succeeding in life and making me feel better about all my efforts. One of my most wonderful sons a genius, handsome, sweet man that I’d leap in front of a truck for, if need be, came by yesterday and I could only spend a minute with him and his darling girlfriend as we were having a Hell Day.

It was an awful day, I sweated until I stunk. My 12 year old wanted to rage, I had a, “Bring it on!” moment. “Go ahead kid, you met your match!” I was a very angry post-menopausal, skinny runt of woman who was so tired of busted in walls and broken windows that I thought a heart attack might be a preferable excuse, a way out of living like this with massively unappreciative kids, three of whom seemed to hate me viciously.

My huge 13 year old son wisely intervened. “Don’t touch her,” he growled at his own birth brother, provoking the very intelligent one of that original group to dissolve in sobs on the sofa, fearing that now that he’d learned to trust me, I was a goner.

Continued here