In the referral picture and all the pictures traveling families took for me, my daughter never smiled. But once I met her in person and have brought her home, she is the most smiley, happy kid I have ever seen.

We are adopting a (roughly) 1.5-year-old girl and her older brother. We probably have two dozen pictures of our daughter taken by our agency and traveling families, and she is not smiling in a single one of them. I have been worried about her- is there something *really* wrong with her? Is she just absolutely miserable? Does this mean she'll have major attachment issues? This blog entry was very reassuring. Thank you!

There can be many reasons why our kids look the way they do in their pictures. In addition to being in a new and perhaps frightening environment (that is especially if the photos are taken shortly after arrival at the orphanage), these first picture taking sessions are likely to be the first time our children have seen a camera. All of the many pictures we received of our son, from the agency and from traveling parents showed a very serious often crying little boy. He was reportedly a very serious little guy and had great stranger anxiety. I was concerned about the reports, but not the pictures. I could somehow see in some of the pictures that behind that sad little face there was a great giggle waiting to burst out. Happily I was right. He bonded fairly quickly and very well. And now he is the life of the party, no longer serious. Well ok that is unless I say no to something like say...jumping as high as he can on the furniture or pulling the piano bench to the middle of the floor and standing up on it and calling mommy come quick look (DS name) with a huge smile on his face, then he's your typical 2 year old who hasn't gotten his own way :-) I echo Mary on the attachment parenting. I wore our son 4 to 6 hours a day when he first arrived, and he is still co-sleeping. Also limiting activities and changes are important as well. For each of our kiddos (3 from Korea, 1 from Ethiopia) we've kept things on a very restricted schedule for about a month. I did not leave the house for a month, DH took the girls to ballet and piano. Other than that there were no comings or goings. We homeschool and DH's office is at home, so we had very few changes to our daily life as we all got to know each other. I really think this " "cocooning" is very important. I would also mention that our son from Korea was a happy, smiley little guy until you got the camera out and then he became Mr. Sobersides. I remember following him around the house taking picture after picture trying to capture his smile. Sometimes, I'd have to tickle him to get the smile on camera. He just plain did not like his picture taken. So there are many reasons our children look sad, besides that fact that in many of the pictures they probably are, especially if as I said the pictures we receive are taken shortly after arrival.