Here are a few items that helped with my daughter. She was adopted as a 3.5 year old child from Ukraine. She came home with overall development delays which included language delays. She spoke Ukrainian and Russian but not very well. My translator constantly struggled to understand her.

Language hint: Don't use words like "do not" or "don't" or "cannot". Instead say things like "no hit". It is very hard for the Russian/Ukrainian speaker to hear the negative at first.

Baby time: She was 3.5 years old but she needed to be treated like a baby. After a bath, I would wrap her in a towel and rock her. I would play the baby games like "counting toes", "this little piggy went to market". I would trace her face. We would cuddle. I gave her a sippy cup or a bottle with water and rocked her.

Modeling and labeling: This is a very, very important way of teaching self-control to the child. Talk all the time. Talk though you emotions. "I am mad the cup is broken. Oh no I am a little sad now because we can never use this cup. I liked this cup. My mad is going away now. (sigh) Oh well, I can clean up the mess." And I played games in front of the mirror. "This is my happy face. I am happy when you hug me. This is my mad face. I get mad when I am scared."

Respect: This one is harder to describe. I respect Natasha as a person. I show this respect by listening to her and letting her make choices. No one respected my daughter and her wishes. Heck when she came home she didn't have wishes beyond eating.

Story telling: Children tend to do this naturally, but you can guide it. Story telling is how children can work though thoughts and emotions. They can relive memories and deal with them. I make up stories for Natasha every night. I let her pick what story she was to hear. Sometimes she wants pretend and sometimes she wants real.

Once she wanted a real story about her pillow. Man that was a reach, but I found something that I could talk about for 10 minutes. We talked about shopping for the pillow.

Some nights she wants a pretend story about being power ranger as a baby. She could fight the bad guys and they wouldn't hurt the baby Natasha.

I also tell her adoption story as a bedtime story.