Intercountry Adoption: Where Do I Start?: Adjusting to Your New Family

This information was taken directly from Child Welfare Information Gateway

Adjusting to Your New Family

Adjusting to a new family and culture may be challenging for your child. Children who have spent most of their early lives in an institution must adjust to living in a family. Receiving one-on-one attention, sleeping alone, and owning things may be completely new experiences. Children often have trouble with new eating and sleeping schedules and with changes in diet, tastes, smells, and other cultural differences. Keeping some items familiar to the child—such as a favorite blanket or article of clothing or familiar-looking items from the child’s country of origin—or serving the child’s favorite or most-eaten food may ease the transition and provide important mementos for the future. Older children also may struggle with language, school, and other issues and may need more time to adjust.

Additionally, some children, especially those previously placed in institutions, may experience difficulties forming healthy attachments (i.e., emotional connections) with their parents (Zeanah, Smyke, Koga, & Carlson, 2005), but parents may be able to help their children build or enhance healthy attachments using various nonintrusive techniques or supports (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2009).

Soon after your child arrives in the United States, you should take him or her to a pediatrician who is familiar with the American Academy of Pediatrics policies on intercountry adoption and who has experience in intercountry adoption. There are many clinics and doctors around the country that specialize in international adoption medicine. (See Additional Resources for websites that provide clinic and doctor listings.)

Your family also must adjust to your new status as a transcultural and possibly transracial family. Issues for families to consider include whether they plan to participate in activities linked to the child’s culture of origin and, for transracial families, how to respond to comments or questions from others about their adoption and the family’s racial differences. Learning how to navigate these experiences can pose a challenge for some families. Parents who have not joined an adoptive parent support group may wish to do so to share the joys of parenting, learn from each other’s experiences, and help each other overcome challenges. Adoptive parents also need to be aware of the effect that the adoption may have on other children in the family and on extended family members.

• With the enormous amount of information available online and increasing Internet access throughout the world, more and more adopted persons, including those adopted from other countries, and their birth families are finding each other online (Pinderhughes, Matthews, Deoudes, & Pertman, 2013). Regardless of the existence of a contact agreement, adopted children and youth frequently search for their birth families and vice versa. Adoptive families should seek assistance from their adoption services provider about how they can support their children in safely navigating the Internet and how to navigate any newly established relationships with the child’s birth family. For more information about open adoption and contact with birth families, visit Child Welfare Information Gateway at childwelfare.gov/adoption/adoptive/contacts.cfm

During this transition and throughout your lives as an adoptive family, staff from the adoption services provider may be a valuable source of support. Some adoption agencies provide services for adoptive families, which may last from about 6 months to several years after placement, to make sure your child is adjusting well. Adoptive parents also can locate resources and referrals for additional services they need from a variety of sources, such as the Internet or the local library. It is normal for adopted individuals and their families to need support beyond the initial transition period. For more information about postadoption services and their benefits, refer to Information Gateway’s Finding and Using Postadoption Services at www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/f_postadoption.cfm.

Continue to Additional Resources

Return to International Adoption (Glossary)

Reference

Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2014). Intercountry adoption: Where do I start? Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.