So, long story short, 6 months ago my husband and I took in my deceased step-sister's 4 (going on 5) year old daughter. We are currently in the process of adoption. This has been an incredibly surreal time in all of our lives. My husband and I are both 26, so while we're not exactly way too young to have a child in our lives, we had not been planning on it any time soon.Our new daughter "Jane" is the best person I have ever met. She has been through a lot in her very short life. The circumstances leading up to her mother's death and our adoption of her are not really what I wanted to make this post about. Her mother (my stepsister) and I were never really close, but I am literally the only relative with no criminal history and a job in her entire family so after she passed the state approached us to take in Jane.Honestly I feel like what I did make this post about was to remind myself that we have come so far in the 6 short months she has lived with us and to share this with a parenting forum. I feel like I've been completely and blindly thrown in to the world of parenting. My husband and I both had pretty unstable childhoods, and one of the main reasons we were not planning on having children any time soon is because we wanted to be more advanced in our careers, have more savings, have more of our issues worked out, etc. And now none of that even matters, because she is here and living with us and we are adopting her. And it kind of feels freeing in a way because we are making it work with what we have? I hope.So far I have done a few things that I think are important:I have gotten her into a children's therapist, and she has given us some really helpful advice on helping Jane with her anxiety. And honestly, it has helped me too. Our house is a zen sanctuary now, we all get better sleep, and I just feel myself having to pull it together for her, but I end up benefitting too.She is in pre-school! Her mother had not enrolled her in pre-school, and from what we can gather she has not had a ton of interaction with other kids in an environment like that. It was very overwhelming for her, and we had 2 failed attempts. After that, we gave it a rest for a while, then went on a tour of 3 different pre-schools and let her choose one and now she loves it.She's eating real food! I knew it was irrational to think I could take her from her mcnuggets and soda that she was used to and get her to eat plain quinoa and squash...She has been through so much and we have been (up until fairly recently) more concerned with her getting adequate calories and just basic macros. We have been going really slow but she yesterday she drank half of a green smoothie and asked for another one later. I almost cried. I did cry.So those are my big celebrations. I feel like I had to type it out because the last 6 months of all of our lives have been the most gut-wrenchingly difficult times and the most beautiful.That being said, I feel like I have gotten the basic basic parts of caring for a child under control. She has medical care, food, shelter, toys, in art class, preschool - we got that. But there are so many little things that keep coming up where I'm like "what do I even do?"-Birthday parties: if we throw her a party, do we just invite all the kids at her preschool? If we have a party at our house, get a bounce house and shit, are 30 4-year-olds going to descend on us or is it reasonable to expect that some of their parents stay to help out?-Play dates: should I be on Facebook parenting groups? I have a FB but rarely use it. We've done a few playdates with the parents at her preschool, but we live pretty far away and most of them live even further than the school.-Screen time: how much is too much? We generally try to limit it and keep it educational. She has definitely been raised in front of a TV/phone constantly up until recently, so it was a difficult transition. I brought her with me to lunch with a friend recently, which I understand is like torture for a 4 year old. So, I told her that if she could color, play with us, and sit still until after our food was brought out, she could play on my phone after she ate. My friend was kind of critical of me for letting her do that, and I felt kind of offended and like defensive of Jane. She's 4, sitting at a table with a coloring book is not exactly fun, but it is something she'll be expected to do from time to time. I don't know. I don't know if I should even take her to do stuff like sitting in a restaurant.-Prepping for kindergarten: any ideas welcome. We are currently keeping her enrolled in multiple summer classes so she still has structure and interaction with other kids. We're using the academic prep materials her therapist has given us, we're reading A LOT, and I want to take her on more playdates. She is nervous about the other kids. She's worried that she won't make friends, and that nobody will like her. And holy shit, I feel her pain. And I feel like I don't know what I can do about that one except reassure her of all her good qualities and we talk about it.Sorry if that was all kind of an incomprehensible ramble. I feel like I needed to get that all out, any input is appreciated. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2YemWyi
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