Good Advice

My favorite blog that I mentioned on my resource list a couple posts ago takes reader questions and often posts them for her readers to comment on. That way, the blog author is not the only one answering but so are many other people who have probably dealt with similar issues.

A couple months ago I submitted a question to her about discipline and she posted it as her Tuesday Topic this week. I read some of the comments tonight. Some are quite interesting and don't really apply to us. But some others were GREAT and SUPER HELPFUL! I'm not going to talk about that discipline question here (you can read it from the Tuesday Topic link). But, what I do want to share is part of the comment one of the readers posted.

What she posted is not new information to me, but was great encouragement to do what we have been planning to do once the kids get here. I thought I would post it so you can get an idea of what our lives are going to look like when our kids come home:

Spend a LOT of time at first going back to that "first year" of life phase (even with the oldest) and do a TON of rocking, holding, bottle feeding, eye contact - all of the things that answer the question "am I o.k.? will you meet my needs?" - over, and over, and over, and over. Do NOT overindulge in the American way of giving them all of the stuff and experiences they have never had - it is WAY too much sensory overload and it is overwhelming in a BAD way. DO have very tight boundaries (in the way that you would have with an infant or toddler). A 6 year old adopted child from a trauma background is NOT 6! I would GREATLY encourage you to not seek to do any type of "school" work during the first year. Keep them home with you and live the infant/toddler/preschool years with them. This is going to be a MAJOR year of change, some chaos, and learning for both you and your children. (I say this as one who has adopted large sibling groups two times now!). It is hard, but it is very good!

The gal who wrote this comment blogs here.

The only thing I'm a bit unsure about is not doing any type of "school" work during the first year. I get where she is coming from but I'm not sure how that works when kids who are seven years old have to be enrolled in school or officially doing home school (which we were planning on). I wrote her to ask more.