This article describes the effects of chronic maltreatment, such as can occur in an orphanage, on a child's psychological development, brain development, and later relationships. There are clear links between maltreatment and later psychological, emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal disorders. The basis for this linkage is the impact that maltreatment has on brain development. Daniel Siegel, medical director of the Infant and Preschool Service at the University of California, L.A., has found important links between interpersonal experiences and neurobiological development

We have been referred a 5th child that we just found out has HbH disease ( a kind of Thalassemia intermediate). The orphanage in Taiwan says that the parents are denying being carriers and are being genetically tested and that the other 3 children of the birthparents do not have the condition. Is this a life threatening ailment or a chronic medical condition that may be medically managed?

Peer pressure is one thing that all teens have in common. You can't escape it. It is everywhere. Whether it is pressure to conform to a group norm or pressure to act, peer pressure is something everybody has to deal with at some time in his or her life.

Children sometimes have their own view on living with a parent, but at what point does their view begin to carry weight...

The new article of Dr. Boris Gindis spells out what and why should be done by the parents of internationally adopted children in regards to their child’s behavior issues at school. The author explains the importance of being well informed about the current laws (IDEA 2004) and the benefits of having a professional on your side when resolving contentious situations related to behavior of your child at school.

This article was inspired by a telephone consultation with a prospective parent concerned about a 3 year old child from South America, who she was considering for adoption. A pediatrician evaluated the child and gave him a “clean bill of health” but was doubtful about his speech: the child was not talking at all and instead pointed at things as a means of expressing himself. The child had a hearing test which came back fine.

The number of women in the workforce is larger than at any time in our history. Increasingly women are focusing on their careers and putting off child-bearing until their thirties and forties. For many women whose biological clock is ticking, increasing the odds of becoming pregnant has become a top priority.

There is a crisis of epidemic proportion within the International Adoption Community. It has the potential to compromise the health and well-being of many adoptive families. Known as Post Adoptive Depression or PAD, it affects over 65 percent of adopting mothers according to a recent survey by the Eastern European Adoption Coalition (EEAC), yet goes unacknowledged or unrecognized by agencies, social workers, and most of the medical community.

The current research involves collecting data from the parents of post-institutionalized children for the purpose of determining the specific resources these children will need during their years in school. While many Eastern European adoptees may glide smoothly through the educational system without needing any additional help, it's clear from data collected at ongoing support networks that a great many of them will need some kind of assistance over and above ESL services during their school careers.

The term “institutional autism” has recently become a subject of discussion on adoptive parents’ lists and in the online publications of adoption professionals. No wonder: the diagnosis continues to cause a lot of confusion and ill-suited remedial efforts.

I once received a phone call from a distraught parent, “My fourteen-year-old son lies non-stop about everything. It’s so bad that if he keeps this up, we’ve threatened to send him to boot camp!” As well as lying, the child had been skipping class and wrestling practice; I gave the parent’s three suggestions to follow for the next two weeks:

Why is it that so many adopted children are diagnosed with ADHD? Debbie, an adoptive parent and counsellor, explains how trauma related to adoption can affect the brain in a way which causese hyperactivity. She outlines briefly some useful parenting strategies for these hyperaroused children.

On arrival to the US with their newly adopted child or later on, when certain problems require parents to go to professionals for a developmental evaluation of the child, many parents are faced with the dilemma: who is the right professional for the evaluation of an internationally adopted child and what can different specialists offer?
Dr. Gindis explains the difference between neuropsychological or psycho-educational assessments of an internationally adopted child and helps you understand which professional you should look for.

Oppositional and defiant behavior is a very difficult family problem. A defiant child can take all the fun out of family life and relationships. But there are effective ways to manage and eliminate this problem. This article describes such an approach.

In each bilingual individual there is a dynamic relationship between competencies of two languages, therefore, cognitive skills and conceptual knowledge that a given child possesses may be more functional in one language than in the other. The cornerstone of an assessment of bilingual students should be the determination of their total language proficiency. Does the Bilingual Verbal Ability Test (BVAT) do it well? The article was initially published in "Communiqué" (National Association of School Psychologists), 27.

Do you have a child that you feel is trying to conquer the world? Does your child insist on having every thing his or her way? Parenting strong-willed children is a challenge that most parents are not prepared for. Here are some parenting tips and advice on dealing with strong-willed children.

We have been referred a 5th child that we just found out has HbH disease (a kind of Thalassemia intermediate). The orphanage in Taiwan says that the Hemoglobinopties are disorders of blood cell structure and they may occur in many different ethnic groups, such as African, Asian, Mediterranean or Middle Eastern decent.

Dr. Linda Busch, clinical psychologist and expert in adoption and attachment, tells the story of how she and her husband came to adopt an 8 year old girl from Russia. Dr. Busch believes that most older adopted children are not attachment disordered, but simply need the same time and attention to attach as children raised with their biological parents. Dr. Busch combines self-reflection with her expertise as a psychologist to tell her beautiful story of older child adoption, and offers help and encouragement to adoptive parents struggling with attachment concerns.

Dr. Gindis speaks about the specifics of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in internationally adopted children.

We just received a referral for a 14 month-old Russian girl. I am concerned about her head measurements (microcephaly?) as they are consistently below the 3rd percentile on the CDC charts. Is it easier to make measurement mistakes erring to the small side than to the large side. Perhaps I am making too much of this; but I have read several articles stressing the significance of this condition when it exceeds 2 Standard Deviations (3rd percentile). I have also read that this is not the type of thing that nutritional improvements, etc. will have much effect on after

Of course, there are many differences between foster care and adoption, ranging from the trivial to the significant.

Reactive Attachment Disorder Checklist

If adoption is on your mind, you should think through your strategies on native language issues of your future child well in advance. Indeed, the preservation of the first language is a "hot" topic for many adoptive parents who often have to choose between their hopes and dreams and the reality of parenting a traumatized post-institutional child. The article points out at some aspects of development of your internationally adopted child, which you should consider deciding on the child’s native language preservation.

My 20 mo old son is reportedly toilet trained. Is it possible? Should I put him diapers or underwear? I heard a lot about children being traumatized during toilet training in orphanage. How can I help my child to overcome this trauma?

In order to understand what to do with the newly adopted child, who was partially trained or abused during the toilet training process, we first have to determine what exactly is early toilet training and what is the difference in perception of toilet training in Russia and in the United States.

This article summarizes the results of a follow-up study demonstrating the effectiveness of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy for treating children with disorders of attachment. The complete study can be found in the December issue of Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, which is a peer-reviwed professional journal. In addition, the complete article can be gotten from the author.

We were just referred a 7 month old boy that was born at 35-36 weeks. The medical report we received says that the neurologist diagnosed him as having "perinatal lesion of central nervous system." In June and August, the notation "early recovery period" was on the report. In October, the notation was "late recovery period."
Is "perinatal lesion of CNS" something that you frequently see? How concerned should we be? Perinatal Encephalopathy - is it something, or is it nothing?

This article describes the subtle signs of attachment difficulties. Many of these subtle concerns can be found in young children adopted from overseas. It is important for parents to be sensitive to the subtle effects of institutional care so that they can appropriately help their children. This article includes some parent annecdotes and specific ideas for parents to use.

What is school readiness and why every parent of an internationally adopted child should be concerned with it at all? Dr. Boris Gindis explains why the answer to this question may have many consequences for the child and for the family.
This article was initially published in: The Family Focus, FRUA newsletter, Summer 2004

A significant number of internationally adopted children may have learning problems in school and require a lot of remediation and other services at school. These services are regulated by the law, called IDEA, which was recently modified. Dr. Boris Gindis explains what the infamous “Discrepancy Formula” that used to be a part of your child’s evaluation for Learning Disability classification is, and how inappropriate its application is in regards to internationally adopted children.

The symptoms of ADD and ADHD are widely varied, so make sure you determine that the disorder really is ADD/ADHD. Professionals are too quick to make this diagnosis and prescribe drugs to treat it, when the best answer could be as simple as a change in diet.

"Artificial Twinning" is a term used in domestic adoptions to describe the process of adopting two children at the same time who are less that nine months apart in age and biologically unrelated. Most domestic adoption and social welfare agencies prohibit the practice because it is so stressful to adopting parents and counter productive for the children. The only way to complete the adoption of "artificial twins" successfully is to work without official approval.

The attachment issues of internationally adopted children remain a very controversial problem for parents and professionals alike. Dr. Boris Gindis looks at Attachment Disorder from different perspectives, briefly analyzing examples from his own decade–long psychological practice and outlining his views on Attachment Disorder.

These activities are entertaining for a whole family and promote cognitive abilities of a newly adopted child. They also set the stage for developing mutual attachment in the family through shared fun and play. The descriptions of activities offer general ideas, and the parents should feel free to make necessary adjustments. It’s important to understand that a child adopted from an overseas orphanage can, for example, be seven years old according to the birth certificate, but developmentally (emotionally and cognitively) is very likely two or three years younger. Thus, the suggested sets of activities differ mostly by the goal parents may have in mind, rather then by child’s age.

Through direct and mediated learning major cognitive skills and processes are formed and put in action. Deprived of such experiences, children may have problems moving to more advanced levels of learning. When a child misses certain stages of normal cognitive development and never learns generic concepts necessary for successful schooling, the educational matter this child is taught simply does not have any structural support upon which to be understood, remembered, and used.
In this article Dr. Gindis re-visits the origins of CCD in international adoptees and points out at the utmost importance of early intervention, discussing some available remedial methodologies.

How does one tell if their child is a compulsive liar? Well, they will lie all the time, make up stories, exaggerate, manipulate the truth and hide the truth.

To date, all research in the area of same sex adoption has come to the same conclusion: The children of LGBT parents......

The parenting key to solving conflict with an angry kid is to understand what they really want and give it to them. And what an angry child really wants may surprise you. Read on to discover how you can start getting the respect you deserve even from an angry kid.

The cultural aspect of international adoption.
In this article theoretical conceptualizations of Vygotsky and Feuerstein serve as a major paradigm for the analysis of cultural issues of international adoptees. Native language attrition and dynamics of English language acquisition are considered in the context of transculturality. The specificity of cumulative cognitive deficit (CCD) in international adoptees is linked to prolonged institutionalization, lack of cultural mediation in early childhood, and profound native language loss. The issue of remediation is examined with an emphasis on cognitive education in the context of acculturation.

Persistent diarrhea is extremely common in PI children and can be caused by many factors. Very often several factors are present at the same time. Frequently persistent diarrhea is just an uncomfortable condition, but sometimes it can be a sign of a serious health problem. In most of the cases, it is a combination of different factors, which is determining the necessity and urgency of actions. Children with persistent diarrhea are more prone to have gastro-intestinal tract complications during or after any stressful situations (emotional, infectious and so on)

The shy/withdrawn adolescent may have major conflicts and issues but nobody knows. In fact, sometimes parents are not able to detect the internal storm or struggle in the shy or withdrawn, largely due to an external calm.

Research regarding children of intercountry adoption is limited, and most children of intercountry adoption have complex histories that may place them at risk for difficulty or failure in the classroom. Although the performances of some children from orphanage environments approximate those of chronological-age peers 2 to 4 years postadoption, duration of deprivation is consistently related, both historically and currently, to the cognitive delays and behavioral difficulties displayed by many postinstitutionalized children. Research regarding children of intercountry adoption is reviewed, and recommendations for future research are offered. [Journal of Special Education, 39(3)]

I have heard the term "institutional autism" as being a complication of living in an institution or orphanage. Autism sounds like a very scary word and I am nervous about this condition. Could you explain this diagnosis and what are the expected outcomes for these children?

What is in the best interest of a child? Is the focus on racially matching a child with her adoptive family more important than providing a stable, loving and nuturing home?

This article describes how attachment develops and difficulties that children can expeience when all does not go as it should.

A brief history and introduction to the Montessori Education Method.

The world of childhood is quite different from our adult world. It is not simply a smaller version of it. It is a different world, and you have to learn to understand it. You have to learn to "read" child's behavior. Every parent needs these skills, but parents adopting internationally may need them more then others, since you will not have the advantage of understanding your child's native language.

Well, we know that sitting in front of video games and TV is not health beneficial. Being out doors help's our children to become creative.

I have heard that Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is more common among adoptive children than the general population. Is this true? And, if so, why?

The language issue in international adoptees

Avocados, are nicknamed "alligator pears" because of their bumpy skins, and come in several varieties. Some have a green covering while others are dark purple or almost black. Avocados can be either smooth or bumpy. Some are small, and others weigh as much as 4 pounds. Yet, when you slice them open, they all have the same delicious light green, nutty-flavored flesh inside.