Question: We are adopting an 8-year-old little girl from the country of Georgia. I would love some concrete tips on how our family (four bio kids) can best communicate with her and foster attachment despite the language barrier. Are there any tools you can recommend or strategies to help non-English speaking adoptees feel more comfortable in their new environment?
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Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Dawn Davenport 0:00
Welcome everyone to weekend wisdom by creating a family.org. This is our short form where we answer your questions in five to 10 minutes. And this question is on how to establish attachment with a child who doesn't speak your language? Here's a question and it's from Sarah. We are adopting an eight year old little girl from the country, Georgia. I would love some concrete tips on how to help our family and she Perin for bio kids can best communicate with her and foster attachment. Despite the language barrier. Are there any tools you could recommend or strategies to help non English speaking adoptees feel more comfortable in their new environment? Sara, thank you for your question. I will give you five concrete suggestions. But first, I want to emphasize that you need to pay particular attention to the existing kids already in your family. And you say you have four, you need to prepare your existing kids for the truly the total disruption of their lives for a short period of time. So often when we see families struggling post adoption is because their existing kids are struggling with the change. And you will see that reflected in my suggestions below. And I'm gonna give you five concrete suggestions. The first one is a suggestion of what you should do before you travel to pick up your new daughter. One, do video calls with her if allowed, and have your kids and pets participate under that before you travel. The second thing to talk about is learn phrases that you think you will need in Georgia, and teach your kids these phrases and make a game of practicing speaking Georgian before she arrives. And if possible, check on your pronunciation because often, even if we're saying the words in a different language, we say them in such a way that it's hard for native speakers to understand us. The third suggestion under before you travel is if possible, ask for her caretakers to send a picture that she has drawn to you then post that picture wherever you post your other kids artworks, your refrigerator, you know in the hallway or whatever. And do the same with photographs, print a few from your trip to Georgia as soon as possible, so that her picture is displayed with other family pics. And the last thing before you travel, that last suggestion is to send a care package if it's allowed with anything that you think that she might like. And, of course, hopefully the caretakers will tell her that it is from you. Alright, those are my tips for before you travel. So my other four tips are going to be for once you're home, your new daughter is going to need her life with you to be as predictable as possible for the first month's home. And this routine builds a feeling of safety which allows her to relax and to attach. So here are some suggestions for what I mean about making your life predictable. The first suggestion under that one is prepare your family, especially your kids, that you will need to simplify and pare down your life for the first few months help strategize with them, ask them for their suggestions about how you can do that with the least disruption for everyone. An example of that you may not want to pull your teenage son out of soccer, but you may want to make sure that you can line up different rides for him so that he can go but yet the rest of the family is not as disrupted. The second suggestion on making your life as predictable is to freeze meals in advance. And people hopefully will ask if they can do something or give her a present. So suggest if they ask that suggest a freezer meal, or a coupon for a takeout dinner or delivery food, either of those would be good. Because this frees you up in those first months to just not have to be hurrying and scurrying around to try to get seven days a week meals on the table. And the third suggestion about creating predictability is to create a visual daily schedule for her and refer to it not just creating it, but refer to it throughout the day, and list your kids to help create it and to rely on it with her. That can be super simple. You don't have to be an artist, I am not an artist and I haven't done this, stick it on your refrigerator or someplace easy for everybody to see and have one in the bathroom for when she gets up with a toothbrush for brushing teeth. And making the bed if that's part of your routine have that on there as well. In the kitchen, if everybody is going to school and she has to accompany you, you know you put a picture of a child eating breakfast, then you put a picture of a car, then you put a picture of adult stick figure and a child's stick figure doing whatever it is you do later in the morning, you get the gist. And when you get ready to do the next thing, go to the visual schedule and point to it. Alright, my third suggestion for helping to create attachment with a child who doesn't speak your language is to minimize the changes in her life as much as possible. Now obviously, you're changing all the big things. So it's impossible to do away with change. This is a huge change, but you could try to minimize it. If she wants to stick and wear her old clothes that she's brought with her, let her I don't care what they look like. While you're there in Georgia, try to buy some Georgian food and snacks to let her have the first few weeks home, things like that, as much as possible, try to keep her life with some familiar things. The fourth suggestion is to meet her needs promptly and consistently. And whenever possible, anticipate them when you can, now is not the time to worry about establishing bad habits or breaking habits she already has. And you need to prepare your kids for what you think that's going to look like. You don't want to you know, have them accuse you of unfairness. And there may be some things that you need to enforce just because it's important to your family. But otherwise, your idea is to meet her needs, whatever her needs are consistently so that you become a safe person. And the fifth suggestion for establishing attachment for a kid who doesn't speak your language is to play and read with her and follow her lead in this play. And there are some games that particularly are good like Peekaboo, pattycake Itsy Bitsy Spider, any type of game that encourages eye contact is a good one. And kids tend to like that. Now, I don't know if an eight year old is going to really want Peekaboo, but you could do pattycake type games. And certainly Itsy Bitsy Spider might work, it might bore you to tears. But the simple face to face games and interactions do help build trust as well as language skills. And both of those contribute ultimately to attachment. And a lot of times we think oh, you know, I've got to read books, she doesn't speak the language. They go back to picture books. You don't have to use the board books, the super baby books, but there's so many good picture books that are mostly pictures, she won't understand the words at first. But if she allows it, this would be a good way to establish physical closeness with her. She can sit next to you on the couch after a couple of days. If she's willing, you could put your arm around her while you're reading. So these are five specific suggestions for how you might be able to build attachment Sarah, with your new eight year old congratulations, I wish you the best of luck. And before you go, let me tell you about our newsletter. Creating a family has an E newsletter. And when you subscribe, you get a free guide. And the guides are terrific. And it's just our way of saying thank you and in the newsletter comes monthly, it's free. We curate some of the best resources out there. We don't overwhelm you with too many there's usually no more than about four. And we try to include those that are very practical and very useful. You can subscribe at creating a family.org/newsletter that's creating a family.org/newsletter Thank you for listening to this week's we can wisdom if you liked it. Please tell a friend to subscribe. 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