[manon]

I adopted a 24-month-old girl. She would make eye contact, play with me, but wouldn't smile hardly at all at first & wouldn't babble. I could tell she understood what was being said to her in Russian, though, and she started picking up English right away but didn't really start talking right away (although she would cry). I think the kids in the orphanage were encouraged to be QUIET. For months after we got home, if she saw kids in a playground yelling & making noise & laughing out loud, she'd look alarmed and put her finger to her mouth and "shhh!" them.

Baby sign language helped her frustration a lot once we finally got started on that. I took her after she'd been home maybe 3 months for an Early Intervention evaluation of development (generally free up to age 3 courtesy of a federally-mandated program in every state). They said that she wasn't delayed enough to qualify for services at that point because her receptive language in English was already so good, and she said a few words in English while we were there.

Her behavior in general was like she just got out of jail and she didn't want to miss anything. She didn't want to go to sleep, and she'd play til she was staggering. I wound up learning the signs that she was tired and going ahead & putting her to bed against her protests, and she'd usually fall asleep in 2 to 3 minutes if I could manage to hold her still that long.

I think I wasn't prepared for how MOBILE she'd be form the get-go, and how I'd have to be extremely vigilant since she could easily get into so many things that she shouldn't.

She has made a really great adjustment, I think, although sometimes I suspect she has somewhat of an insecure attachment to me. But she is clearly affectionate and loving and basically a happy kid. She saves her worst behavior for me, which is probably a pretty good sign attachment-wise.

Things to facilitate attachment: lots of finger-play games can help get your child used to eye contact with you, like itsy-bitsy spider, or like playing games in the mirror with each other. That's less intimidating than just trying to hold your child where your child can't avoid eye contact.

We also bathed together a good bit, which helped, but which also wound up probably being the cause of my getting giardia (parasites). She had a really bad case of giardia that it took us a total of 10 months of treatment to get rid of.

Later after she did start talking, I had her evaluated again maybe 3 months before she turned 3, and they wound up giving her some pretty intensive speech therapy right up to the day she aged out of that program. It really helped or maybe it just came at the right time when she was ready.

Best wishes to you. I'd suggest reading "Building the Bonds of Attachment" by Daniel A. Hughes.