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Whoa, that comment up there is intense!  

MIA was adopted at 1 year and has some very amazing pre-verbal memories. Very unsettling memories and very emotional ones. I won't go into the unsettling ones. However, the others are very interesting as well. At 18 months, she would be moved to tears by music, especially middle eastern music. One day in the car I was playing some Azeri music. she became very quiet. I looked back to see wave after wave of tears silently rolling down her cheeks. At 3, when she saw Finding Nemo, she became almost hysterical, crying uncontrollably for hours. I couldn't decide whether to end the movie or let her finish it. We let her finish it (as she wanted) because I felt she would work through the emotions better that way. She was devastated by Nemo's father's pain and fear about losing Nemo. When we adopted MIA, we spent time at the Baby House caring for her, feeding her, playing with her. We left a soft babydoll with her. I had slept with it for weeks prior to going to pick Mia up so she had my scent with her in bed each day. We went back several times a day so that she associated us with the place. By the time we went to pick her up, she reacted excitedly to seeing us. This did not resolve issues but made the transition a little easier.

All I can share is my perspective from having raising two children [aged 10 yrs and 6 mos] from birth, and one [aged 4 yrs] from the age of 7 months, when he came home from Guatemala.

In the parenting classes I attended before the 4yo came home, they told us that in general, kids adopted before 10-11 months old generally had few transition issues, those adopted before 2 had adjustments to make but these were usually overcome relatively quickly, and that after that, it became an increasingly more difficult transition. And that in all cases, whether the child had formed attachment with loving caregivers was a critical piece -- the early ability to bond with other humans is important to being able to successfully bond with other humans throughout our lives.

But it is damn eerie to bring home a 7 month old, who was clearly loved and well cared for in his foster family, and see NO visible transition effects. He was, and is, a happy, loving child. He likes to hear the story of his adoption, as many young children like to hear about their origins, but he has no related angst about it.

At the time, I said to friends, does this mean someone could have taken my daughter [then 6] at the age of 6 or 7 months and plopped her down somewhere else, and she'd have been just fine? Apparently. And now that my younger daughter is about the same age, it is strange to contemplate that -- strange when I see how clearly she lights up when I walk in the room, when I see how she recognizes and loves many of the people in her extended family....there must have been effects there for my son that we could not see, since he did not have the ability to verbalize them at 7 months. Right? I don't know, it just seems that way to me.

My in laws just adopted an almost-three year old who had been fostered by their best friends for about a year. He is a very easy going, low tension child- almost distractingly so. He never fusses, doesn't even cry when he really hurts himself (a fall out of their van straight onto his head brought an "ouch. head." even though it was severe enough that they thought it might have been a concussion).

He also is very affectionate and loving. To everyone. The first time I met him he was about 2, when lots of children are at their weariest of strangers. He came over, asked to be picked up, and snuggled me for quite awhile. He hadn't even been told who I was yet.

Its interesting to me to muse on whether these are just naturally occuring personality traits or the result of lack of attentiveness and frequently changing caregivers in his first couple of years. Either way, however he got how he is, he is an absolute delight. I'm so glad to be part of his family- the family that will be there forever.

My nephew was adopted at about 16 months.  I was lucky enough to be staying with my sister and her husband at the time and was his first babysitter over my summer vacation.  It was difficult. He cried at first and was clingy.  But children that age, as rooted in their routines as they are, are also very flexible (I guess some more than others).  I think as long as they are given affection, and have at least one or two things from their old life to cling to (a blanket, a binky) they adjust quite quickly.  My nephew is now almost 30, by the way.

My former father-in-law's birth mother was a 14 year old Italian Catholic girl. Back in the 1940's they would only place a child in a home of similar ethnicity, and it took almost four years for him to be adopted. He stayed in an orphanage until then. I read some of the notes from his case history, and they describe a very sad, lonely child, prone to tantrums and anger. He was not able to bond well with his adoptive parents, and could not attach to his son when he became a father. He has been married six times, is emotionally and physically abusive, and remains a very unhappy person.

Couple of things, Kate. Your great (or was it great great) grandfather was put on an orphan train and shipped west as a boy. Hundreds, or thousands, of children were. I'm sure someone has done a study of some sort to see how they turned out. As far as I know, he survived, grew up and did fine, but there have to have been terrible emotional scars.

And, during your last visit to Bell Buckle, I was playing with Charlotte when she suddenly looked around and said, "this is the wrong house."

Katie, if you or any of your readers are really interested in knowing more about toddler adoption they can pick up a copy of Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft. Toddler adoption has different challenges than does infant adoption or older child adoption and this book is pretty much THE book about it. (Madonna could use a copy, let me tell you.) And the best resource for adoption history including information about the orphan trains can be found here: www.uoregon.edu/.../timeline.html

Ellen Herman, who manages The Adoption History Project, also has a new book out: Kinship by Design.

Weird.  Weren't there some comments here previously? None are showing for me...

Nevermind.

KOA & MIA: (((huggs)))

I just came across this post ... I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately, as I was adopted from South Korea at 18 mo and my daughter has just turned 17 mo.  Growing up, I always knew how old I was when I arrived - it was just part of my "story" but it wasn't until I met my brother's soon to be stepdaughter (who was 18 mo) a few years ago that it kind of viscerally came home to me just how old I really was.

I wonder so many things about my daughter's memories at this age ... if she were to be taken away now and raised in another loving family and I suddenly reappeared when she was 5, would she remember me?  I imagine she wouldn't.