What About The Language Barrier?

I keep being asked about this: how long before the kids speak fluent English, whether we speak any Russian, and how we communicate.

The estimate we keep hearing is that they'll be fluent in about three months from when they came home.

We studied Russian before we brought the kids home. We used a CD course by Theresa Kelleher called "Adopting From Russia," which is for preadoptive parents of verbal kids from Russia. (Use Google to find it; there's no good URL.) By the time the kids came into our custody, we had command of some words and phrases useful for speaking with a young child. I'm pretty good with language anyway, so I've been able to guess pretty well what they're saying even when I haven't known every word. Peter and I speak a mixture of Russian and English to them--more English now than at first. My method is to say something in English, pause for a response, and then repeat myself in Russian if there isn't one. Now that the kids have been with us a month, their comprehension is quite good, so there usually is a response.

Some people ask me whether our speaking Russian to the kids won't slow down their acquisition of English. My response is that we don't know and don't care. Frankly, it struck us as more important that they attach to us quickly than that they learn English quickly. We felt that the kids would attach to us best if they trusted that they could communicate with us, so we put in the work necessary to make that happen. Are they attaching? We sure think so. Their preschool teachers say they act like any 2- and 3-year-old kids who grew up with their birthparents; experienced parents who see us all together say the same.

For what it's worth, an adoption professional we know says that most people don't adopt older kids (i.e. over 1 year) because they've heard about attachment problems with them. She says, however, that very many attachment problems happen because of communication problems early in the relationship: in other words, when the kids can't talk to the adoptive parents, they can't attach. She validated our choice.

I was astonished to hear this professional say that very few parents are willing to do the work we did and are still doing to foster attachment. Some of that work: sticking to clear routines at home so they can predict what happens next, making one big change at a time such as starting preschool now and daycare later; introducing them to only a few toys, rooms of the house, and people at a time so they won't feel overwhelmed; showing affection physically and constantly, even if it means kissing an angry child on the hand when she tries to hit us. (She no longer hits. She in fact asks for kisses now.)