From the time Ashley was about 11, we seemed to have this love-hate relationship. She was a difficult girl in some ways, but then she had come from the neglectful background, and her babyhood was anything but a picnic. Maybe it was my fault, adopting all those children. I think she felt a little lost among her brothers and sisters. Maybe her special needs would have been better addressed in a more structured environment of the public school system at an earlier age. But you take what you're given and run with it. Ashley went into 7th grade in September of 1995. As far as her grades went, she did beautifully- she excelled at anything she set her mind to. Aahh, but if only I could've convinced her to set her mind to what was important. Mostly what she wanted was to be around her peers. She made friends readily, but her social butterfly personality combined with adolescence and a certain sense of privilege was a volatile cocktail. Ashley was, and is, a physically beautiful girl, and the boys flocked to her, causing envy and jealousy from the other female classmates. Not being around other teens in a school setting gave her a slight innocence, and she didn't understand why some of the girls seemed to hate her. Of course, girls at that age are naturally catty anyways, and Ashley wanted to be liked by everyone. Peer pressure became a problem, and we spent the last half of the school year dealing with an especially hostile teenager who lived three blocks from us. Mike was disgusted. Ashley had this quirk- whatever emotion she gave leave to upon her return from school was picked up by the entire family. So if Ashley was happy, the family was too. If she was mad, by dinner everyone would be wanting to kill each other. Mike said he was not going to stand for this. The only thing that saved her was that she was getting nearly straight A's. Eighth grade brought more trouble. She started out with lackluster attention in class and getting in trouble for passing notes. She'd won a place on the cheerleadig squad, but we soon found out she was missing practice and heading down to the 7-11 after school for a slurpee instead and hanging out with some girls who'd gotten in trouble the year before. In November she sneaked out of the house to attend a school dance that Mike said she couldn't go to. She looked older than 13 and insisted on acting older too, and she wanted to do a lot of stuff that most teens love- wearing make-up and jewelry and dressing in fashionable clothes. The crowning blow came when Mike and I were summoned to the principals office in the spring. One of the girls on the cheer squad who was living with her grandmother because of trouble in her family had threatened suicide. As her friend, Ashley took it upon herself to try to talk the girl out of killing herself, so she wrote her a letter providing details of what our daughter called "her terrible life". Only her life wasn't all that terrible by most standards. But Ashley wrote about being molested as a small girl, of her mother using drugs and abusing her, and how she'd tried to kill herself. And the principal believed her. Now she wanted to know what was really going on in our family. I described Ashley's birthmother, who had used drugs and who may have physically beat Ashley when she was small. The principal brought in Ashley, and she was mortified to find that her letter had been given to the principal. No, she told her, she was not talking about us. We, her parents, loved her and treated her kindly. It was her birthmother who used the drugs. The rest was a lie. Well, the fallout was not good. Ashley was forced to quit the cheer squad, and her cheerleader friends turned on her for lying, even if her intentions had been noble. The principal suggested that she was a negative influence at the school, and Ashley was given a choice of spending her entire day in study hall, having independent study at home or transfering to another school for the remaining three months of the year. She chose study hall, but even this didn't satisfy the lady. She tried to say that Ashley was recruiting her friends to stare the principal down when she tourned the campus at lunch, so in April, our daughter came home to finish her 8th grade year. And Mike had ample grounds to claim that Ashley couldn't handle being in public school. Ashley promptly ran away and spent the night at her girlfriend's house. She told me later that her dad was a terrible person who didn't even try to understand her point of view and just wanted to humiliate her and keep her locked up, with no friends, no fun and no freedom. But she wouldn't understand that with misbehavior comes consequences. There were other problems too. Ashley had a mean temper, and she lashed out at what she saw as favoritism and unfair treatment. She noticed that the younger children had no problem getting the love and attention from Mike that she craved. She sometimes picked on the little kids and injured them or caused them to "accidentally" get hurt. Even with our large home, the kids had to share bedrooms, and Ashley and Nicole had a room together. She really loved Nicole, but the fact that they bunked together made for unpleasantness, and until we split the girls up, Nicole was a nervous wreck. We finally had to turn Mike's office into a room for Ashley, and Mike built himself a new office in the basement. Mike, however, didn't help matters. He was this big authoritarian figure and totally unwilling to compromise. I sort of felt sorry for Ashley, and often when Mike started getting heavy-handed with the discipline and rules, I’d go to bat for her. It was ridiculous for him to be telling our daughter that due to sneaking a five minute phone call to a friend, she was grounded from using the phone for the next three months. Of course, it was impossible to hide the fact that I disagreed with him, and this did nothing to help my relationship with my husband. What relationship? He just got more angry and more demanding because of it, and I withdrew even further in my shell, wondering if all wives felt so unloved and abused.