I will keep this as short as I can. My wife and I have recently taken guardianship of my niece from my brother. We are adjusting to having a 12 year old in the house and the new situations that come with it. Overall she is a great kid, very well behaved and good spirited, despite the experiences she has had in life. She has a father who loves her dearly, but it seems he doesn't know how to properly raise a child.My brother is going through a troubling time in his life and we both decided my niece would be better off living with my family for awhile. The environment she was in was less than ideal. Her stepmother verbally abused her constantly, and her approach to parenting was to yell about everything. Her father was less involved and has been going through drug addiction and a bad marriage for the last couple years. There family has been in a vicious cycle for awhile now. Consisting of my brother using drugs and then he stops working regularly. This in turn angers his wife because of financial strains, who drinks to relieve the stress. This leads them to weeks of intense fighting, mainly yelling. There has been times the cops have been called to the house due to one of them becoming irate, usually after drinking. Then once things blow up completely, and divorce or separation is thrown around. My brother usually stops using drugs and gets back to working. Then everything is fine between them. This calm lasts usually between 3 weeks - 3 months, before imploding again. They do not believe they have any issues with substance abuse or with the environment they were creating for my niece. They also do not think that she was aware of the fighting or any other issues in the household.Long story short. After seeing this cycle happen multiple times over the last couple years, topped off with possible physical abuse from the stepmother. I removed my niece from the home and convinced my brother that she needed to stay with me for a bit. Until he was stable and could provide a safe and sound environment for his daughter.We have enrolled her in a new school recently, as I do not live in the same state as my brother. So my niece is in a new town, at a new school. I can only imagine how she feels. She seems to be in good spirits and is overall happy to be living with us. She does not act out, and is not disrespectful at all. But, we have noticed some things that are concerning to us. She seems to have what I would call possible daddy issues. She seeks out attention/friendships with mainly boys. She has done this for years. When ever I would talk to her in the past about her friends, they were mainly boys with a couple girlfriends here and there. What is concerning about this is. My wife had allowed her to have snapchat to talk to her friends back “home”, we want to make this transition as easy as possible. We have since taken away snapchat, due to the app and not feeling comfortable with her having something we cannot monitor. But, before we took it away we read some saved messages. One that was concerning was between her and a boy she had just met that day at the new school. She was sending selfies and asking to have him rate her, also she rated him, 1-10. I do not like this, but It’s been awhile since I was 12, and I don’t remember if this is normal behavior for that age. I don't think it is but what do I know about current school atmospheres.Also, it was brought to our attention from the old school that she was behind in school. Not just assignments but overall status of where her peers are. She has a vocabulary of a 4th grader and the spelling and comprehension of a 3rd grader. We have noticed this more once we were aware of the issue. We are looking into ways to help her progress with these issues in a somewhat timely manner, as we do not want her to fall behind again. On top of all of this we have an emotionally damaged child. On the outside she is happy and vibrant. But, there are signs of abuse and neglect everywhere. The main thing we are seeing right now is when trying to talk to her about things she tends to shutdown. Lowering her head and not talking. I don’t know if this is her age or more due to the fact that she was yelled at for literally everything before. Small things that we bring up, seem to shut her down. I’m talking about little things like, “Hey, can you please put your shoes in the closet when your not wearing them”. She also seems to be afraid to answer truthfully about how she is feeling or what she wants. She tends to try and give you the answer she thinks you want to hear. If she is unsure of what you want she will shrug her shoulders. We have talked to her about this being a safe place. That we want to know how she is feeling and if things are bothering her. That we will not yell at her for telling us how she feels.I guess the reason I am sharing this here is, I want to use every resource I can to make sure I give this 12 year old the best chance to be a healthy, happy, productive person. So if anyone has had experience with a situation like this please let me know of any tips you have. If you can point me in the right direction for matterals to read or resources I can use I would be greatly appreciative. Our main goals as of right now are to get her more focused on school, have her talk to a therapist about what she has been through, and get her into some type of tutoring to get her more on pair with her peers with vocabulary and reading. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2lUyrsM
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