Messages By: kjones

  My husband and I are having trouble finding an effective means of disciplining our three newly adopted children.   Initially before we adopted the children we agreed that we would use the time out method and did ad it worked well for a while.  Now that we know the children better we are faced with some unusual problems.  Our eldest is a girl.  She is very far behind educationally.  Although she is presently in the sixth grade, she is only on a second grade level.  My husband continually takes her word that she has no homework and has nothing to work on for school.  This has presented many problems for the two of us.  He applies no discipline when it comes to her and says this is normal for a father-daughter relationship.  He is afraid that if we discipline her she will run away.  I feel that if she does not get the education she needs she will not be able to survive in life.  I am currently fighting with the school to get some testing done but they say that she cannot be tested because she has not acquired the English language proficiency she needs to take the test.  Although I continually confront the school and her teachers with the fact that she never comes home with homework except for one book report, and my husband refuses to believe anything but what he is told by our daughter, I feel trapped.  I feel that I am not a good parent if I do not provide my child with the skills and education she needs to get along in life.  It is doubly difficult in that all three of them are still learning social skills.  We also have been confronted with the problem of having my mother-in-law who is 85 years old and has dementia living with us and adapting with the fact that my middle son has been recently diagnosed with Celiac disease.  I cannot seem to get across to my daughter that she needs an education.  She seems comfortable with the fact that my husband has told her she can live with us forever if she wants and feels no need to achieve.  It is not that I would not want our daughter to live with us for as long as she needs and wants to but I know that she needs much more than that to survive in this world.  I feel like I am fighting a losing battle when it comes to this.  Help!  Any suggestions, comments, etc. would be of help.