In the adoption mantra “Plan for the worse, hope for the best,” I think we lucked out on the best side of the equation. Personally, I think that there are a lot of people out there with positive adoption stories; it just doesn’t make for an interesting read and/or those people don’t need to seek out help on the internet.



Bonding
We adopted our 3 1/2 year old son and our 5 year old daughter at the end of last April. We started attachment “therapy” as soon as we met the kids. I think they were well prepared to join our family by the orphanage since, by the end of the first day, they were sad that we were leaving without them.

By the end of the week in Addis Ababa, they were pretty well bonded to us (enough not to be scared about going with us). In terms of true strong lasting attachment, our son attached a little more quickly than our daughter. That may have had to do with their ages, but it may also have to do with their personality. I have no frame of reference but I would guess that adopting them as siblings helped in their attachment because they had each other and because they could feed off each other’s attachment.

Attachment Therapy
We followed the general practice of doing everything for the kids (even stuff that they could do on their own). We didn’t really stop other family members from showing affection or doing stuff for the kids, but we still probably did 95% of it when family was around. When we arrived home the kids were a little shy and fairly well bonded to us, so in the first few weeks, we probably did more like 99% of the things for them due to their preference for us.

Play was a big factor in breaking the initial tension between our 5 year old and us. While our initial reaction was to just hug her as much as we could, she wasn't really into that until she realized we were fun to be around
(through playing with her).

For touch, lotion works really well. If you need entertainment at the same time, pass the lotion dot works well (put a large dab of lotion on your arm, then use your arm to put it on someone else's body part, then they use that body part to put it onto someone else (or back on you if there's only the two of you playing).

All the kids really like a Polish saying/game that I guess is a combination of "one step, two step" and "Tickle under there". We were just playinf it last night. The translation is basically,"There was a little mouse"(walk with fingers)"Looking for a home" (keep walking)"Chochochocho" (walk faster)"He found one" (tickle in armpit, neck, wherever).

Learning English
There were only two times when communication was a real problem. When we first met them, it was a little frustrating on both sides of the equation. A few days into being with them, after we had worked out our hand signals and learned a few Amharic/English words, it wasn’t really a huge problem
communicating.

Then, after the kids had been home a few weeks, they started testing the boundaries to figure out the rules. This time was extremely difficult because you don’t know if they are purposely disobeying you or if they don’t understand you. We tried to err on the side of not understanding, but we found that having firm rules was equally important for their transition into our family.

I kept a journal of their learning English. Here are the highlights:
2 weeks-lots of repeating things we say
1 month-they knew some nouns, but not many verbs.
1.5 months-started talking to each other in English (3 word sentences)
2 months-started to talk in long sentences without any structure (cave man talk)
3 months-started to use pronouns
4 months-stated to use prepositions regularly.
5 months- basically caught up to their peers.

At 9 months home, you’d be hard pressed to tell that they had only been speaking English for 9 months. There are a few pronunciation issues, and there is an occasional vocabulary word that I would think a 5 year old would
know which she doesn’t. Although, having never had another 5 year old, it’s hard to know.

Food
We didn’t really have problems eating. From day one at the Hilton, the kids were scarfing down American/Italian food as quickly as they would Ethiopian food. The kids grew up in and around Addis, so they may have been more used to it than kids from the countryside.

Sleeping
Estifanos (3.5 years old) couldn’t fall asleep without someone in the room for the first month he was home. The nannies spend all night with the little ones, so he was probably just used to it. We weaned him off by leaving and coming back to check on him every couple of minutes. Meron (5 years old) has had no problems sleeping.

Grief/Loss
This is the one area where their transition hasn’t been seamless (I'd be worried if it were). What has worked best for us is having open lines of communication (which is hard in the beginning when complex thoughts are hard to communicate). Not surprisingly, as their English got better, they expressed more to us (and understood more of the permanency of adoption). Also, kids react differently, so you have to figure out what your child needs; our kids are polar opposites in this regard.

Meron (5) will eagerly to talk to you about Ethiopia; sometimes the strangest things will trigger a memory for her. We did have some problems initially with her telling us memories that were not real. (As best as we can guess, they probably didn’t eat burritos every night in Ethiopia.) But that seems to have subsided now.

Estifanos on the other hand, doesn’t like to talk about Ethiopia at all. It’s not clear if he is doesn’t remember much or if he doesn’t want to talk about it because he’s so sad he can’t talk about it. Given that he’s the happiest 4 year old I’ve ever met, we’re betting on the former although we try to push his comfort level a little each discussion so he doesn’t slip though the cracks.

As I said, I think that just talking with your kids as much as possible is the best way to manage the loss they’ve experienced. It’s clearly not good for them to keep it bottled up inside and they often have to do that until they have the words to express their feelings. Open-ended questions are helpful although sometimes questions with yes or no answers will invoke a long answer.

You’ve also got to find the right balance, because while one day they will be missing their Ethiopian family, the next day what boy was chasing them at school will be way more important.

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