Residential Treatment - Our Long Journey
By Guest Writer Beverly Hall. Please feel free to ask Beverly questions on our forum.The events leading up to Residential Treatment
My daughter is now almost seventeen and I wish I could say I’ve survived the teen years unscathed. I don’t know if anyone ever does nowadays.She was only eleven when I adopted her and she was considered a special needs child because of her neglect, abuse and abandonment by her own birth mom.
As a single parent by choice, I thought I was ready to become a parent of a pre-teen. My educational background was in Early Childhood Education and I took all of the necessary classes required to adopt. I had read the 800 page "De-identified"”file about my daughter beforehand that read like a bad Monday night movie. After consulting with a psychologist, I decided to make the commitment to be a Mother for the first time at 39 years old.
The first year was considered a “honeymoon” time and her true colors didn’t come out until about eighth grade. That was when she began showing interest in the high school boys and since the two schools were connected, it was easy to make friends with the “older ones”. Since I had her in therapy, I felt I trusted her therapist to see what I couldn’t, and help her.
When she entered high school, all heck broke loose.
She began lying about who she was hanging out with. She began her defiant attitude. She began the arguing that was non-stop. She began to hang around people that I did not know. I believe she did this on purpose, because they were friends she knew that I would not approve of. A deliberate act of defiance.
She had a whole group of friends that I did not know and that made it easy for her to sneak around and do things that she should not do. And most of the friends she had were seniors and she knew I did not want her hanging around seniors. At that time my daughter thought that I was stupid. Somehow she thought that she could tell me that these kids were younger or in her age group. When I saw their pictures in the newspaper as seniors graduating I confronted her about it, and she still lied about it. I've always considered myself a very strong Christian person. From the time that I adopted my daughter we went to church and my daughter was very active in the Youth program of the church. My daughter was active in the music program at church and was asked to be one of the praise singers in the youth group. She was living a double life.
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