Anyone that considers international adoption has to be aware of some of the potential challenges parenting a PI (post institutionalized) child can bring. I educated myself about attachment disorders, potential medical problems, and developmental delays and tried to be as prepared as I possibly could to be ready for anything that came our way. Fortunately, we were blessed with an amazingly healthy son and had a fairly easy transition. For the most part, I would say that we are 98% past parenting PI issues and have moved on to parenting normal issues of a two and a half year old boy.
The last remaining 2% can be broken down into 1% attachment issues (which I’ll have to cover another time as it’s too much to tackle today) and 1% speech delays.
Artem has speech delays. He hasn’t been formally diagnosed by a doctor, but I know, I just know, deep down, in the part of my heart that hates to admit that something is wrong, that there is a problem.
When we first took Artem to the IA (international adoption) doctor in Houston a few weeks after coming home from Russia, the doctor did a very brief assessment of Artem’s language skills and told me that he was right on track and that we would most likely not qualify for any services to support Artem’s language development. At that time, Artem was right on track for an 18 month old toddler. But a year later, Artem’s language skills are not where they should be.
For months, I was the only one that truly understood Artem. Even Randy had times where he had to ask me what he was saying. Artem has a very expressive face and can convey so much just in a twitch of his eyebrows or a wrinkle of his nose. And then there are the hands, sometimes I swear Artem is part Italian the way he uses his hands when he talks. So between the face, hands, and grunts, I always knew what Artem was saying.
But as the months went on, Artem’s speech wasn’t progressing. Well meaning friends would tell me not to compare him to other children because of his past; he didn’t have a mother reading to him every day and talking to him one on one each day fostering his language development. I understood this, but still I knew there was a problem.
Artem is very bright, and yes I am biased, but the boy has amazing problem solving skills, a great imagination, and strong reading comprehension skills that many of my kindergarten students lacked. He quickly developed a HUGE vocabulary but only used one word at a time when talking to us. After several months of this without any progression to two word sentences, I started reading as much as I could on speech delays and the underlying message in every article was, “model, model, model” and absolutely do not make your child repeat the sentence correctly as it would only frustrate them. I trusted the “experts” and followed their advice even though I wondered how Artem would get his sentences right when I never made him say them correctly.
A typical conversation would go something like this:
Artem: Dada?
Me: What about daddy? (I always question Artem; it’s the teacher in me)
Artem: Work?
Me: Yes, daddy is at work.
Artem: Truck?
Me: Yes, daddy drove his truck.
Artem: LOUD!
Me: Yes, daddy’s truck is very loud.
Always one word at a time and he never used verbs, but I never corrected him and made him say the sentence the right way as I was hopeful that he would catch on and start to say sentences on his own. We didn’t see any progress and before I knew it, we were home from Russia for 10 months and were still not seeing ANY progress.
Artem has always been a little parrot; we constantly refer to him as Pete and Repeat because whenever Randy and I are speaking to each other, Artem repeats our words, BUT he only repeats one word. For example, if I told Randy that we needed to go to the store, in the background you’d hear Artem say, “store”, but only one word and usually the last word we said. Artem also never used “me” or “I”. He always referred to himself in the third person. If he wanted to do something, he’d pat his chest and say, “Artem, Artem”, never “me” or “mine”. Another thing I noticed, despite singing to Artem constantly, he NEVER sang songs with me or back to me. He would do the hand motions but never use the words. I finally started to admit out loud what I knew inside, that Artem had a speech delay, and I called an expert that I knew could help me; my dear friend
Adrienne.
Adrienne is a speech pathologist and fellow international adoption parent and I knew she would understand our situation and be able to consider this as well as give me some great advice on how to help Artem. The first thing she told me was that we needed to make Artem repeat “sentences” correctly. In the beginning these sentences would only be two words, “want juice”, “want milk”, and she told us not to give him these items until he said the sentence. I know it sounds mean but he didn’t suffer and it started to work and we began to see some progress with Artem’s speech. But then we kind of slacked off and let him slip back into the one word requests again and Artem’s progress stalled. We buckled down again and made Artem repeat the sentence correctly and he started to use two word sentences again. Not only did he start to speak in simple sentences, he started to sing songs with us and now I constantly hear him singing to himself while he’s playing in his room. And we aren’t the only ones who can understand him anymore. The other night at a party, some adults were standing outside talking and Artem saw something on the cement (it was a chili pepper that had fallen off the grill) and loudly announced, “dog poop” clear as could be and everyone started laughing. Told you he was smart!!
Now we regularly hear things like, “Me do it” or “I go”. He uses verbs a lot more and when he tells a story or describes something, he uses two words together like, “big hat” which he never did before. The other day I was making Randy’s sandwiches for lunch and telling Artem the ingredients I was using, just talking to him like I do all the time. Later that day Artem asked where Randy was and I told him that he was at work and asked him what daddy does at work. Normally Artem will say, “hel-copy” for helicopters but that day I got a long pause, followed by a scrunched up nose, and finally a big smile while Artem proudly said, “eat cheese san-iches”. Ah sweet progress…a three word sentence. And while I wouldn’t say that Artem’s language skills are exploding, they are far beyond what they were in March when I called Adrienne and we are now making Artem repeat three word sentence and he’s catching on, little by little.
I guess my advice to other parents out there that might be in our shoes is don’t be afraid to listen to your gut because sometimes the “experts” aren’t always the “experts”. Sometimes mommies just know. I wish I had started this sooner as I feel like I did an injustice to Artem, but hopefully we’ve caught this in time and will see progress now that we are on the right track. And even though Randy has been reduced career-wise to a “cheese sandwich eater” rather than an attack helicopter pilot, we are seeing progress and that’s all that matters at the end of the day.
