The power of stories

Elena's always been fascinated by books and stories, ever since she first came home - likely because, I think, no one ever sat down and read a book to Elena in the orphanage, and so the experience was new and fascinating.  I've told this story before, but bear with me:

For a few weeks or so, when Elena first came home sitting down to "read books" meant having her randomly page through the book, pointing out objects, and naming them.  She didn't yet understand that a book is read from front to back and contained a story.

That is, until one night when I forced us to read through "The Cat in the Hat," (or the "кошка в шапка" -- koshka f shapka--as we read it) reading every word in order. She was kind of fussy, but less so when I did it the next night.  More importantly, the act of reading the whole book showed Elena it contained more than just words and pictures - it contained a story. I could almost see the lightbulb go on in her head when she figured that out.

What was said and what was meant

One thing you prepare for, when preparing for adoption, is dealing with comments from other people about adoptive children. 

Unlike many adopted kids, Elena actually looks similar to Teresa and me. I think that's not co-incidental; the Russian Ministry of Education intentionally matches children to parents in part by looks.  Whether or not that's true, it means we don't have to deal with the same kind of questions or comments from strangers (well-intentioned or otherwise) that, for example, White parents of an African-American child deal with.

However, we were recently chatting with an acquaintance, while watching Elena play, about how similar she looks to us.  In the course of the conversation, the other person said, "oh, you can't even tell she's not your daughter."

My baby's so smart...

I've said before that I don't really want to turn this blog into a "funny thing our kid did today" blog, and neither do I want to turn it into a "my baby's so smart" blog, but I'm going to make an exception just this once, and for a reason.  This is really a post about language acquisition and communication, but it's also about problem solving.
I've recently been mulling over problem solving as a useful skill, specifically because of a particularly knotty issue we've had at work. For me, as an engineer and a researcher with a doctoral degree, a lot of what I do--particularly the really hardcore parts of the job description--boil down to "problem solving."  I suspect that, for most other professions, "problem solving" is part of the job to some extent, and probably a large extent.

And so it's been intriguing to me to see Elena use problem-solving skills, particularly in language and communication.  As I've said before, Elena seems to value communication pretty highly, and really makes an effort to get her meaning across.  However, her pronunciation and grammar are still pretty shaky (she's three years old, after all), and that leads to some problem-solving opportunities as she learns English.

These were most apparent last year, when her vocabulary was still minimal and her pronunciation shakier still. A couple stand-out examples:

More language: science gets it right

If you recall reading this post from a couple months ago, I talked about language acquisition and transition from one language to another. Although Elena has been picking up English at a pretty rapid clip, we've still had general (as opposed to specific) concerns about her language acquisition.  In general, internationally adopted children are at high risk for delayed language devolopment, because of issues with transition to a second language, and, often, a dearth of positive language feedback in their early years in an orphanage. 

Although Elena seems to be doing very well in acquiring English, language delay can be subtle, and may even crop up unexpectedly when the child starts school and encounters the more formal, less contextual language of the classroom.  In addition, way back when we petitioned the judge for parental rights, we had promised that we would have Elena's language skills evaluated, and provide professional assistance if needed.

So we wanted to be proactive about language issues, and in any case a promise is a promise (especially to a Russian Judge), so we made an appointment with a speech-language pathologist.  I think the pathologist is used to dealing with profound speech and language delay, because her first questions were "does Elena use words?" and "does she use more than one word at a time?"

We explained Elena's background, and our general concerns, and the pathologist ran some tests to determine Elena's language ability.  The tests were designed for native English-speaking children, the pathologist explained, so we'd just have to see where she scored and adjust based where Elena might be lacking in her English vocabulary.

Epiphany

I've been paying especial attention to Elena's progress in learning English, both because she's at the age where kids really acquire language, and because English is effectively her second language.  (Kids adopted from foreign-language countries frequently have language delays.)  One thing she hasn't really mastered so far is pronouns, which if you consider it are somewhat complicated: the words "me" or "you," for example, refer to completely different people depending on who's doing the talking.  Weird!

In any case, Elena sticks with third-person names in conversation: "Dada help Lena tie shoes," for example.  Teresa and I still use pronouns in conversation, but when we want to make sure she understands something, we'll revert to the third person also: "Lena, stay here" or whatever.  Elena still seems to understand when we tell "you" to do something, but it's also clear we're talking to her at the time through eye contact or gestures.

So she's never actually used a pronoun until just recently. (More after the break.)

The power of language

I want to expand on one of the points we made in the last post: the power of language and why it's important.  Elena's been part of our family for five months now, and we can see her command of English grow from day to day as her vocabulary expands, and (more recently) as she begins to master syntax and expressing more complex thoughts in a single sentence.

In some sense this isn't really surprising, because she is just about the right age for language acquisition.  But in another sense, it is surprising.  Let me quote from  Parenting Your Internationally Adoped Child, a fairly lengthy and sober book about what one can expect when adopting internationally:

Several common phases occur as a child learns a second language.  These are normal and predictable, but they can cause some frustration for parent and child.  The first is language loss, when use of the the first language ceases, as it does rather abruptly for most internationally adopted children.... The second is a silent period, during which a child uses neither her native language nor her second language. During this period a child may be shut down, listening but not speaking. Estimates vary, but most researchers believe this silent period lasts between three and six months.... The third and last phase is the emergence of the new language, which as you will discover, eventually does happen.

So it is often, "normal and predictable" to expect many children to remain silent for three to six months.  This was confirmed by a friend of ours, whose own children, both from Russia, had followed the pattern described above--she actually expressed surprise at how much Elena was talking!

I think part of this difference is due to Elena herself.  The staff at the orphanage in Kotlas told us she was something of a chatterbox, so language and communication might be more natural and more important for her, giving Elena more of an incentive to acquire new language skills.  She had a fairly good grasp of Russian, meaning she already had the skills in place to learn A LANGUAGE.  Then, if I understood what I read correctly, learning another language is not so difficult--its just using the same very basic skills to learn more words.
But I also think part of this difference is the work we did, small as it was, to learn a little Russian.  We learned a lot of useful phrases from the book Russian Phrases for Children, as well as a few more words for common foods, for example.  That wasn't as extensive a Russian vocabulary as Elena was used to, but it did give us a solid core of language, relating to everyday events, that we could use to immediately communicate with Elena. We could tell her things, and more importantly, she could tell us things. 

That smoothed the transition for Elena, because she didn't experience an abrupt loss of her first language.  I'm sure she experienced an abrupt reduction in the richness of expression she was able to master, but she could tell us what she wanted and expect us to understand her: the communication aspect of language still existed.  That gave her incentive to continue using language, and that made it easier for us to teach her English, because we can work English words into our conversations, or say it twice- in Russian and then English.  We're a the point now, five months in, that the Russian we use is pretty much optional.  Elena knows the corresponding English words already, and we're keeping the Russian words in use only as a comfortable link to the past (and because it's fun).

Our experience is anecdotal, almost by definition, but I think it's logical that smoothing the transition between a child's native language and English would maintain both the recognition of the utility of language, and the incentive to learn language.  It does take some effort for parents to learn to communicate in the child's native language, but (at least for us) it's not the kind of effort required to become fluent in adult-level conversational Russian.  It's the amount of effort required to memorize common phrases and words needed to communicate with a two-year-old: simple commands, common nouns, and some affectionate phrases.
About that last item: affectionate phrases.  An anecdote: One of the affectionate words in Russian Phrases for Children is сладкое (SLATkaya), meaning "sweetie"  A week or so after we got home from Russia, I told Elena she was a "slatkaya."  She obviously recognized the word, because her face completely lit up, and she pointed at herself and said, "Elena? Slatkaya?"  I nodded and she repeated it with more conviction.  We still use the word at least once per day, and Elena's face still lights up when she realizes that she's the slatkaya.  Her other favorite word is "umnia" for smart.  She loves to be told she is umnia when she has done something clever, and she makes sure to say it if we forget!  Before sleeping she always hears, "Elena is a slatkaya, umnia, ochen korosho baby!"  Sweet, smart and very good!  Even though she understands many words in English, the Russian words still quickly go straight to her heart.

Now isn't that worth learning a few new words?

UPDATE 1: Language

It's been a while since we've updated this blog, and that's mostly on purpose:  the intention of the blog was to let people know how our trips to Russia were panning out; now that we're home, I don't really want to turn it into a "funny thing our kid did today" blog.

But there are still some things that are related to travel, and Russia, and orphanages, that are interesting, so I'll do some occasional updates.  The first one is on language.

Probably the most common question we get asked is how well we can communicate with Elena, and how quickly she's learning English.  I'm going to answer that question, in the form of "Tips for parents thinking of adopting Russian chlidren."

TIP 1: Buy a Russian-for-adoptive-parents book.  We bought "Russian Phrases for Children;" it includes two pocket-sized phrasebooks (one for each parent!) and an audio CD.  The phrasebooks (and CD) are divided up by use: basic questions (are you hungry?), directives (come here), endearments (sweetie), and the like, so it's pretty easy to find what you want.  We memorized a few phrases and were able to look up more, so we could actually hold a mini-conversation with Elena in Russian right away.  Totally worth the money, because it really smoothed the language barrier.

TIP 2: Memorize a few basic words.  It's not that hard.  Yes and no.  Come here.  Would you like this?  What's that?  Who, what, where.  Hungry, thirsty, pee, poop.  Hi, bye.  That collection of words got us a long way in communication.

TIP 3: сказать.  "сказать" is Russian for "say," as in "say please."  That's one word that *wasn't* in our phrasebook, yet is extraordinarily useful.  How can you teach English without asking someone to say the Englich word?

TIP 4: Caca.  Yeah, caca, but not what you think.  (more after the jump)