Remediation of language-based problem at school and at home

A combination of various causes may lead to what is called educational handicapping conditions. They are described in our school system as 13 educational classifications and listed in the federal law, IDEA. Usually language-based educational handicapping conditions are designated either as Learning Disability or Language Impairment. The school-based remediation includes four steps:

Thus, for all practical purposes, when dealing with language-based academic problems in IA children adopted before the age of 3, it is better to subscribe to the famous "duck theory": "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck". It would be only reasonable to treat a child adopted at an early age and exhibiting learning problems as you would treat a typical child born into an American family who is experiencing difficulty with reading and writing. The parents should request an evaluation of educational needs and obtain a proper school placement with supportive and remedial services (such as language therapy). In some cases specialized remediation and tutoring (such as the Lindamood-Bell system or Wilson Reading program) may be needed. But the bottom line is that if the child is adopted before the age of 3, my advice is to treat her learning problems as one would any other child in your neighborhood, with one substantial difference: each and every remedial program in school must include goals related to the remediation of cognitive language. According to existing research, clinical experience, and many adoptive parents’ surveys, IA children as a group are more at risk for cognitive language mastery failure than their peers. Regardless of the remedial methodologies used in school, language must be a specific goal of home-based remediation.

The best intervention is prevention

Adoptive parents have to foster intense cognitive language development in their children right after the adoption, no matter how young their child is. Conscious, focused, and substantial efforts by the parents are needed to develop this aspect of language in an IA child. Although there are a lot of remedial methodologies for pre-school and elementary school-age children, none before was developed specifically for IA children. Now, we have one called SmartStart. This methodology was created by two educational psychologists, Dr. Carol Lidz and me. The program utilizes typical family activities, but bears in mind the specificity of international adoptees and points to basic cognitive concepts and skills which may not have been formed in the child’s earlier development. The program intends to systematically stimulate cognitive language development in children ages 3 to 8. At the same time, SmartStart promotes attachment through shared enjoyable family activities. At the heart of SmartStart lies the idea of making traditional family interactions cognitively and linguistically remedial for a child. These activities are not randomly picked; they are selected to reflect what is currently known about best practices in promoting cognitive, social, and language development of young children. The SmartStart methodology stresses the utmost importance of adult mediation, lacking in the early stages of the child’s learning. The program consists of 8 units. The first is an explanation of the principles and the other seven are specific sets of activities. The handouts give you an overview of the content of this program. A unique and prominent feature of each unit is a vocabulary section: which words to introduce and how to explain an activity to the child in order to make it more remedially meaningful. The SmartStart program presents a large set of activities and provides the language that mediates these activities. As educators and adoptive parents, we have learned that love and good nutrition are not enough to accelerate cognitive and language development and promote thinking, learning, and literacy in children who had been victims of deprivation, neglect, and institutionalization. The SmartStart program, available as an online class and as a CD presents an example of what can be done at home for language and cognitive remediation of internationally adopted children.