UPDATE: My [42 M] adopted daughter [9 F] doesn't think of me as her dad anymore

I wanted to update those of you who remember this post from 2 weeks ago: http://ift.tt/2p1teCA off all, I want to thank everybody who responded. When I first posted my story, I was hoping to get a couple of responses and some basic advice. Instead, I got hundreds of comments and many PMs with words of support, advice, and comfort. As somebody who never intended to have children and was thrust into the role of a parent overnight, I often find myself wondering whether or not I am fit to be a dad. I can not express how meaningful it was to see so many people say that they think I'm doing a good job. Other than a PM I got from one woman who thought I was an unfit dad for not enrolling my daughter in Catholic school (which actually turned out to be a pretty funny conversation - I can post screenshots if anybody is interested), everybody was incredibly kind and encouraging.Now, as for the actual update, I'm happy to say that everything has (mostly) worked out. I arranged a meeting with her teacher, the school's vice-principal, and the recess supervisor for the next day. We started the meeting with just the four of us and I explained the situation to them. They were shocked to hear the story and apologized. I could tell that they were genuine, so I did appreciate that. Still, I was confused about how the recess supervisor could not have noticed the bullying, so I asked her. She said that she did notice it, but didn't realize how bad it was, so she decided not to intervene and let it solve itself. To be perfectly honest, at that point, I lost my cool a little bit and didn't stay as rational and cool-headed as I should have. It's a playground of young kids - in my opinion, any case of bullying should be taken seriously, not just left to the children to sort out for themselves. I do think that children are often coddled to much, and that teachers/parents should stay out of minor disputes and conflicts to let kids learn conflict resolution and whatnot independently, but bullying is not a two-sided dispute or conflict. So I let her know my stance, the vice-principal and teacher thankfully agreed with me, the recess monitor reluctantly agreed with me and apologized, and she promised that she would keep an eye out in the future. To her teacher's credit, she was very apologetic, even though she had nothing to do with it (the bullies were a few grades ahead of her, so it occurred during recess/after school, not in class itself). They also asked if I had any input in what I thought the punishment for the older kids should be. Despite my personal involvement in the situation, I don't think it's fair to influence school policy and guidelines based on my in-the-moment emotions rather than evidence-based protocols, so I let the administration come up with a punishment, which turned out to be a week of detention during recess and a verbal and written apology to my daughter (from each of them). Personally, I thought that the punishment would have been appropriate for a younger kid, but I think it was a little too light for kids their age who definitely should have known better, but the bullying has indeed stopped and the letters (which she let me read) seemed genuinely remorseful enough, so I suppose it was the right call.Anyways, so after she was called in, they updated her on what we talked about and asked if there was anything else that the school/teacher could do to help, and she said that there wasn't.Another piece of advice that I got quite a bit of when I posted my original post was that (a) I should find a child psychiatrist/therapist for her so that she could talk out her feelings about the bullying, her parents, and other issues; (b) I should find a psychiatrist for myself to deal with the trauma of losing my family. As I mentioned in my previous post, there is only one psychiatrist in my town. While she didn't specialize in child psych, she does take paeds patients in addition to adult ones. The situation is complicated, however, by the fact that we went to med school together and she is one of my closest friends, and she also knows my daughter rather well, so I felt like it might be difficult for everybody involved to separate our personal relationship with our professional one. Still, out of the options (drive a couple hours+ every appointment to another psychiatrist, see a therapist instead of a psychiatrist, or continue to avoid professional help altogether), I felt like it was the best choice. With regards to my daughter, I booked a family appointment with her and we had our first meeting this week. It wasn't particularly productive, but if there's one thing I remember from my psych rotations in school, it's that it's the speciality with the slowest progress and the least defined results. I'm sure that, with time, both of us will see meaningful change in our attitudes towards the situation we were dealt. The doctor said that, for now, we'll stick with family meetings, but she may decide to see my daughter one-on-one in the future, depending on what she feels is best. As for me personally, I think I'll soon start seeing someone independently (either her or a therapist) to work on my own problems and decade-long grief, but at least for a couple months, I just want to focus on my daughter and get into the routine of these appointments.As for our relationship, things have bounced back to normal. Like some of you predicted, after three or four days, she started calling me Dad again without me having to say anything. I asked her why she decided to switch back. A part of me was expecting an emotional response, but instead she just said that it was too weird to call me anything else, which was good enough for me. :)In a way, these past couple of weeks have brought us closer together. I think she's always known how much I care about her, but (though I may be reading too much into it), I think that me showing her that I would support her through all of this made her feel like she could trust me and that she knows even more just how much I care about her.On a barely tangential note, I have a funny anecdote that I think some of you here on /r/parenting might appreciate. When she was really little (like 3-5 or so), she used to come sleep in my bed a lot, as I think a lot of kids do. Sometimes it would be because she was having nightmares, sometimes it would be because we were just hanging out and we would fall asleep - but for a bunch of different reasons, she slept in my room at least a couple of times a week. Obviously as she got older, that mostly stopped, but for the past couple of weeks, we've been talking quite a bit at home about her parents and her feelings about this whole situation, and so she's fallen asleep a few times in my room. Anyways, I've been casually seeing someone for the past year or so, and we recently decided to make our relationship something more serious, so she slept over for the first time a couple of days ago. At around 11 PM as we're all sleeping, my daughter wanders into my room because she's used to sleeping in my room now and couldn't fall asleep in her bed and, without seeing my girlfriend, climbs into the bed. My girlfriend rolls over, sees this silhouette of somebody who's not me, freaks the fuck out in her half-sleeping state and yells, waking me up. I think that we're getting robbed or that there's a spider or some other huge problem, so I start freaking out too, and then my daughter looks all confused (I guess because she just noticed my girlfriend), and it took us like 20 minutes to calm down and figure out what happened hahaha. My daughter went back to her room, we all fell asleep, and we all laughed about it the next day, but it was such a weird experience in my groggy state of mind. Anyways, I hope that you guys enjoyed that story, which is not particularly relevant to anything, but I felt like telling it anyways, so I did.I want to end with a little rant. It has nothing to do with the advice I received or the predicament I had about the bullying. It's just something I want to get off my chest. I often remember my brother and how I will never play pond hockey with him. He was a better person, doctor, and hockey player than me (though a shittier powerlifter haha). I often remember my daughter's sister and how she was unfairly taken before she could even comprehend the world around her. I wonder if she would have grown up to be just as sweet, caring, funny, and smart as her sister, and it sucks that she never got the opportunity to grow up into the woman she had every right to be. I remember my dad, who was one of the strongest people I knew (I know that's a cliche statement that 50% of people say about their dads, but in this case, it's definitely true). He immigrated from India to Uganda with nothing to his name, was ousted from Uganda to the UK because of Idi Amin's racism, worked in a factory for years in England, and finally immigrated to Canada for a better life for me and my brother. If anybody deserved a good life, it was him, and yet he only got to hold his granddaughters once. I remember my sister-in-law, who was like a sister to me, and who I love just as much as I love my brother. She could deadlift 235 lbs - nothing more needs to be said. I remember my other sister-in-law (her sister) who, when I first met her, welcomed me into her home, watched a LotR marathon with me that same night, and became my best friend in the span of a week. I used to joke with her that she was wasting her time learning how to speak Kyrgyz, but the unique interests and experiences that she always brought to the table never failed to entertain us. I remember her son, who was a thousand times kinder than I was when I was fourteen. He desperately wanted to come with my brother and I on our climb of Aconcagua. When I finally summited, five years after their deaths, I felt like both of them were standing there with me. The world lost 6 of its kindest, smartest, and best people in the span of three days, and I lost them too. I don't think I'll ever get over it. I don't believe in fate, I don't believe in God, and I don't believe in existentialism, but I do believe that we have the power to lead lives worth living. It wasn't fate and it wasn't God that saved my daughter's life nine years ago when everybody else died, but that doesn't make her life any less impactful. I will do everything I can to make sure that she is loved, supported, and protected as she deserves to be. We were both dealt a shitty hand, but I will continue to make sure that our lives are meaningful. We're currently planning a trip to Nigeria and Benin for next winter, and I look forward to seeing us grow even closer as a family through that experience. I have no idea what the next year, five years, or thirty years will bring, but the one thing I do know is that she is an amazing little girl, and that I will always be her Dad.tl;dr: Everything worked out in the end. We still have some issues to work through with the help of my friend (a psychiatrist), but I'm hopeful for the future. Also, if anybody in Nigeria or Benin is reading this and wants to hang out next winter, let me know!Also, unrelated to anything, but watch the movie Circle on Netflix. It's dope. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2oHigP6