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Like parents everywhere, GCOF members have had their share of challenges with their Georgian angels. We share our experiences with hopes that readers will recognize the solutions to their own hurdles, and that potential parents will appreciate that there are resolutions to just about every problem.

"Unofficial" power lines running to apartments, below

A good overview of possible issues is the article “Medical Issues in Internationally Adopted Children,” excerpted from International Adoption Guidebook by Mary M. Strickert, © 2004. Another resource is “Medical Problems of Adopted Children” from the Encyclopedia of Adoption. Access the article "Medical Issues of Children Adopted Abroad" on the author's web site or in PDF.

 

Language Acquisition

A GCOF family writes:

When we got our daughter she said only two words in Georgian: Water and No. Apparently she had been encouraged to keep her pacifier in her mouth at all times, probably to keep her quiet. Well, it worked! She understood Georgian unusually well, as evidenced by her being able to carry out multiple-level tasks. We don't think she had heard Russian at all, so she was a one-language gal. I figured we'd have extra problems acquiring English. But not so!

Turns out that Anna, like most children, understood me through my vocal expression, facial expression, and body language. I could talk to her in English and she seemed to understand a good portion of it right away -- which of course she didn't. She was responding to the other cues that language has, which aren't really universal but are similar for most cultures. Fortunately American English has the same roots as eastern European languages, so those non-word cues are the same for us. Add to that the fact that children are hard-wired to learn FAST, and language was almost a non-issue for us.

We put her into speech therapy as soon as we got home. The therapist discovered that Anna had some mouth-muscle weakness, because she'd never used those muscles. So we made faces and sounds, and Anna went to therapy twice a week. Boy, she loved it! They "played" during her sessions, and I made sure to discuss everything with the therapist, so I knew what to do at home.

The therapist told me to talk all the time. In fact, if I was hoarse by the end of the day, I was doing it right. Oh, brother, did I talk! And I read to Anna several times every day -- not just before bedtime. I also let her watch good educational shows, like Dora the Explorer and Bear in the Big Blue House. We even got videos from the library on topics that Anna showed an interest in, and she ended up having a passion for ballet! (no words in ballet, but whatever...) Acquiring language is a fascinating process, and Anna did it SO fast.

Keep in mind that very little of verbal communication is actually about the words -- it's mostly about the volume, pitch, body language, and facial expression. For example you can say, "That means a lot to me" in several ways: sarcastically, honestly, humorously... And kids talk about very concrete things -- they're not discussing how the Dow Index is doing this month. They're talking about the here-and-now, so you can hold up an object and name it, or do a task and name it.

Capital city T'bilisi, below

Attachment and Bonding

Another GCOF mom observes:

I tend to think that just about any child who has had a rough beginning, whether with their birth family or at an orphanage, is highly likely to have some level of attachment disorder. You might also want to learn about sensory-integration issues. Even if a child is not diagnosed with sensory integration disorders, the exercises prescribed for it can be very satisfying and grounding for just about any child.

I also want to suggest a book about a kind of attachment therapy that I think is very good. The therapy is called "Theraplay.” The book is "Theraplay: Helping Parents and Children Build Better Relationships Through Attachment Based Play," and the website is www.theraplay.org.

Theraplay was developed to help autistic children and children from challenging homes develop more emotional, attached relationships with their parents. It has proven quite successful with internationally adopted kids and for kids who have lived in foster homes. The premise is that, no matter what the age of the child, it is important (and quite possible) to reestablish the interactions and emotions of an infant-parent relationship.

The book was written for therapists, but I found it quite readable and useful. My husband, daughter and I did have several sessions with a therapist, which were very useful also, but I think that the sessions really just confirmed for me that I had understood the book correctly.

I think that adoptive parents are sometimes overly-optimistic, at least outwardly, about how "normal" our families are, and I feel that that attitude, while helpful to us on some levels, is not so helpful to our children. Our children are different, and although they can learn to act like "regular" children, they've been through a kind of trauma that probably affected them quite deeply. I am a much better parent since I started being more honest about what we might face as a family, and the truth is, at this point I love my daughter too much to be scared anymore.

Tracey, a GCOF mom, writes:

I have to say that Andrew felt an instant bond with Laura. While I was really delighted to have her as my child, it was slower and more like, "Who the heck is this very small person living with me?" It took me longer. We dealt with the whole "showing affection to strangers but ignoring me constantly" thing for a long time at the beginning. It was really hard, and I felt like a total caregiver instead of a Mom most of the time...

Laura and I took a really long time to get used to each other. I would say a little over a year, which I know sounds like a long time when I read other people's experiences. And to this day my sisters totally notice the Daddy's Little Girl thing going on, big time. My social worker told me that sometimes it can take up to two years for bonding and attachment to kick in naturally with older children, depending on the situation they are coming from.

I read The Weaver's Craft by Mary Hopkins-Best. Laura was older but a lot of the same stuff applied. We also sought some professional help for a problem that we couldn't figure out on our own. While we worked with that doctor, we realized that there was quite a bit more going on. Hey, you are going to come up with situations with a lot of the older children that most of us can't figure out by ourselves. Nothing wrong with that! It's the learning curve.

I think it's interesting that if someone has a problem with their plumbing, they call in a professional plumber -- but sometimes when people have problems with their children there's a taboo about getting professional help!

Tuberculosis

A GCOF mom says:

Emily was diagnosed at 10 months. She had repeated respiratory infections and wheezing. Emily was here 7 months before she was diagnosed and probably had the disease since birth. She had a negative TB test when she arrived in the U.S. followed by a chest x-ray (because she had the BCG vaccine) which was also negative. TB is an extremely slow-growing bacteria. Infants rarely transmit the disease because they don't produce sputum which acts as a vehicle for the bacteria and can rarely cough hard enough to project the bacteria. My older daughter and I have been tested several times and do not show any signs of exposure.

The preventive medication is usually the drug isoniazid. As drugs go, it has relatively few side effects and is inexpensive. It is a small price for "insurance" that TB bacteria is not lurking in her body. There is a liquid available, but the volume that a child needs to ingest may be difficult for her to get down and it does not taste very good. I would highly recommend getting the physician to write the prescription for the tablets. Grind them up with a mortar and pestle and put into a syrup like raspberry or cherry(available by the pint at the drugstore) or even Hershey's chocolate. Emily had the active disease so she was on 3 medications: Isoniazid, Rifampin, and pyrazinamide. I was able to get all three drugs into less than one and one-half teaspoonfuls volume of raspberry syrup. Another option would be to have the pharmacy flavor the liquid isoniazid. I didn't try that but they may be able to make it taste a little better. For us, the volume was more of an issue.

Adoptive Families Magazine has an excellent online resource for TB testing.

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