We are up to letter "L" in my Transracial Adoption ABCs posts, and I have lots of posts to file under "L". :)

Language – If you are adopting a child that is not an infant, language is going to be an issue. If you are adopting domestically, obviously language is going to be less of an issue than if you were adopting internationally, and yet language is often an issue even in domestic adoptions.

First, I will discuss language in domestic adoptions. It is very common for children adopted from foster care to have some degree of speech delay. Speech delays can result from alcohol and/or drug exposure in utero, neglect, abuse, lack of stimulation, trauma and other events that are common to children avaialbe for adoption in the U.S.

Children with speech delays can find it very frustrating to try and communicate with others, and especially when they are in a new environment and around people who are not used to their speech, it can be challenging.

If you think about it, it is very common for adults to not be able to understand a child’s speech when it is a child they do not know well. However the parents of that child can usually understand them even when others cannot.

We have family members who are always saying, “What did he just say?” when Marcus talks, and I can usually translate. :)

So even children who speak normally may be hard to understand at first, while parents and child are still getting to know each other.

You would also be surprised what an impact that accents can have.

Our daughters came to us at nine and six years old and they were from the deep South. Although they spoke English, they had very thick accents and it was tough to understand a lot of what they said.

At the end of the school year, my daughter’s first grade teacher admitted that for the first half of the year (our daughter’s first year with us) she did a lot of guessing and nodding when Des talked to her because she couldn’t understand her.

By being in our home and in school, our daughters quickly lost the thick accent and slang words that were making them tough to understand, and now we laugh about the way they used to pronounce some things!

Another issue involving adoption and language has to do with cursing. Older children (and sometimes even young children) can often come to their new families with some undesirable language learned in orphanage life, foster care or their birth family. This can be alarming to the adoptive family, and is definitely a habit you want to kick in the butt.

While you do not want to make the child feel badly (especially if they are used to using some words or were unaware that they are unacceptable), you definitely want to get the message across that that type of language is not permitted in your home (or appropriate anywhere).

Our girls came to us using a few phrases that we definitely did not want in our home and family, but luckily they quickly learned what was and was not ok, and it was not much of an issue at all.

Here is a great article titled “When Little Kids Curse” that has some valuable suggestions on dealing with this issue.

See my next post for information about language and international adoption.