My darling daughter, Natasha, was adopted at 3.5 years of age from Kharkiv, Ukraine. And I immediately started telling her adoption story as part of her bedtime. The fact that she still spoke Russian/Ukrainian and didn't understand English didn't stop me. I was telling the story for me really... to practice it.


Natasha was developmentally delayed and I waited until she had been home 6 months before having her language skills evaluated. Families who adopt internationally have 2 options for language skills evaluations. No one seems to have an opinion on which one is right.


You can immediately have the child evaluated in their native language or wait 6 months to evaluate. A child under 12 years of age will move 90% of their vocabulary to the new language within 4 months. The next 2 months they will work on the underlaying language structure and the rest of the vocabulary.


At 4 years of age my Natasha had the language skills of a survival oriented 2 year old. I knew her language skills were bad, but I didn't realize she was faking so much comprehension.

The screener asked Natasha, "How did you get here today?".


Natasha's reply: "Mama plane (deep breath) and bed"

She was telling the screener her adoption story. Natasha's adoption story always ends with, "We fly home..... and we slept in our beds."


Natasha started language therapy and I went in search of a children’s therapist. I decided that now that Natasha could understand more, I needed advice on handling more sensitive areas. I didn't want to underplay or overplay the reasons why she entered Ukraine's orphanage system. I wanted to make sure that Natasha understood her birth parents did bad things but that didn’t make them bad. And that didn’t make her, Natasha, bad either.


Now a days I don't tell Natasha her adoption story as a bedtime story unless it is requested. She has been home for 5.5 months now and adoption is part of her... like her brown hair.


I read "Dear Amy" advice column this morning and was very glad that I just started telling Natasha her adoption story rather then waiting for a "right" time. Because sometimes a "right" time never comes....

Dear Amy: I am an adoptive father who did not tell my daughter that she was adopted. She learned that she was adopted when she was 22 years old.

............

I still regret that I did not tell my daughter at an early age that she was adopted. It would have saved us years of heartaches and psychiatry.

From: Dear Amy: May 28, 2006