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The rule of thumb is that it takes a verbal child about three months to become fluent in a new language if they are immersed in it and have no recourse to their first language. Peter and I adopted our daughter K and son M from Russia when they were nearly four and nearly three, both fully fluent in Russian. It took our kids longer than three months to learn English, probably because we spoke some Russian with them at home. Now that they’ve been home twenty months, however, they speak no differently than their friends who were born here.

Peter and I studied Russian before we brought the kids home, listening in our cars to audio courses on CD and consulting with Russian-speaking friends. We sometimes joked about what ought to be included in a phrasebook for pre-adoptive parents of preschoolers. Our suggestions included, “Put down the matches,” “How many pills did you eat? What color were they?” and, “Did you hit your head? How many of Mommy/Daddy do you see?”

We studied hard. Despite our efforts, however, our kids were more fluent in Russian than we were when we brought them home. We had to ask K to define words, conjugate verbs, and decline nouns for us. Sometimes, frustrated with our inability to understand him, M would grab the dictionary out of our hands and point to words. Not that he could read.

Our adoption agency and the kids’ caregiver were glad we spoke Russian with the kids, but occasionally a preschool parent would criticize us. I was asked more than once, “Aren’t you worried about their learning English?”

I always responded truthfully, “No. I’m worried about their wanting to talk to me at all.” Meeting a child’s needs is the first step in the attachment process, and it’s hard to meet needs if you can’t communicate. If you’re considering adopting a child who speaks a different language from you, I can’t urge you strongly enough to learn that language. You don’t need to know how to say much, but you do need to understand what your child is asking for.

Aside from obvious words such as greetings, pronouns, and common household/hygiene words, here are the words and phrases we found most useful in our first months as a family:

Please/Thank you
An untranslatable word meaning “Great job!”
That is not a toy
Don’t touch
Go/ come here/ with me
It’s necessary
Where (is)….?
I (don’t) understand
I (don’t) know
Show me
Like this
Do you want….?/I (don’t) want….
Do you like…?/I (don’t) like….
This or this? Which one?
(I can’t) do it myself
Pick me up/ Put me down
Five minutes and then….
It is time to….
now/ later
yesterday/ today/ tomorrow/ day after tomorrow
I am your mom/dad
you are my son/daughter
I love you
our family
forever

We quit using Russian about six months after we brought the kids home. One day I addressed them in Russian and they ordered me, “Stop talking like dat!” So I did.

So far, K and M seem to have attached to us beautifully; even their teachers find it hard to believe they’ve been home only twenty months. I must admit, though, that Peter and I discovered a downside to helping them make a gradual language shift. Whereas kids who are immersed in the second language without hearing the first often go through a silent period, our kids never stopped talking. They still haven’t.

by Deborah L. Blicher

Photo graciously provided by Project 404, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.