Our first training session

We had our first training session yesterday. We met with three other couples and our adoption counselor Karin. The other couples are adopting from Haiti, China, and Russia. Two of the couples were on their first session like us. It was a full eight hour day with lots of information, handouts, and conversation. We talked a lot about ways to relieve stress, planning our trip, racial and cultural issues and identity, bilingual and transcultural issues, language development, naming and renaming, specific country culture, and positive parenting.

One thing that we found really interesing is the difficulties adopted children may face in language development. Above average learners may take 8-10 repetitions to learn a word or action. An average learner may take 25-35 reps, and a naive learner (meaning a child that lacks the experience or exposure to language from birth) may take 1400+ repetitions!!!!! The use of sign language is strongly encouraged to help children communicate and is proven effective. Karin also cited studies encouraging "thinking" out loud to your child to help them "catch up" on the amount of words and language they've heard. That includes things like explaining everything while walking down the grocery aisle - "Now we're walking down the cereal aisle... look at all the red, green, and blue boxes... now I'm reaching up high to get the Cheerios box!" Just imagine Dave and I walking around the store explaining everything we are doing :)

We also met a very special family who came to talk about their adoption experience. Jill and Gary adopted Louis from the Philippines. They started the process in January of 2004, submitting their dossier in June of 2004. They were approved by the Filipino government in July of 2004 to adopt. They waited 19 months until they were matched with Louis!! Then had to wait 4 more months to travel to the Philippines to go meet their son and bring him home in June of 2006!! I'm sure you can imagine that we were shocked by the length of time it took for them to be united with their son. But we learned that it's a typical amount of time to wait. They told us that once they were together with Louis though all of the worry, frustration, and feeling of defeat went away immediately. The other cool thing we learned was that they adopted Louis from the Little Children's Home. We actually have good friends over there who are connected with this ophanage, so we were excited to hear the name of that orphanage!

One of the best parts about yesterday was when Jill, Gary and Louis were getting ready to leave after sharing their experience with us. Dave walked over to them to tell them thank you. All of a sudden Louis walked over to Dave and said, "Hug? Hug? Hug?" So Dave reached down and picked Louis up. Louis hugged Dave and started patting him on the back. Then Louis leaned back and puckered up, waiting for Dave to give him a kiss. He wouldn't get down until he had a kiss from Dave!! After Dave set him down, Louis came over to me and asked for a hug. I picked him up and he gave me a big hug, leaned back and puckered up again. I gave him a kiss and another hug and then he blew a kiss to the rest of the group. It was almost like Louis knew that we were going to be adopting from the Philippines, and that was exactly what we needed that day! It felt like the Lord was assuring us that we are following His will for our family, and that's a great feeling!!