Get a detailed description of what should be recorded on the video tape so it is useful for a psychologist or pediatrician. Find out what to expect from this videotape evaluation. Like everything else, videotapes and reports may significantly differ in quality, and you need to understand what you are paying for.

If you plan a trip to Russia, in this presentation you will find information about educational documents, which should be collected while you visit the institution where your child lives. See pictures of these documents and listen to sound files of their native names:
it will be easier for you to ask for them when you are in Russia.

Although medical and educational issues do coexist, particularly, in older adoptees of age 4 and up, in perception of many adoptive parents they may have different priority. Practically all internationally adopted children receive medical examination on arrival, while only a few school-age children undergo a psycho-educational evaluation. Educational issues should stand next to medical concerns in their significance for adoptive parents, because these two aspects of international adoption are more connected than it appears at the first glance.

Learn about occupational therapy and special OT needs of the internationally adopted children. Become a knowledgeable consumer: learn about types of tests, theory selection, and service delivery models.

Learn about Sensory Integration Theory and its applications for the remediation of internationally adopted children.

A bilingual psycho-educational evaluation of a child on arrival is difficult to overestimate: it can help avoid a lot of future problems for the child and the family: you can rule out learning disability in the native language (or confirm it) and measure the actual developmental and educational status of your child before the native language disappeared and the process of learning of the new language can interfere. Your child may become eligible for the additional (special education services) from the very beginning without waiting for years when the problems escalate and the child is acknowledged as having problems and can at last be tested in the English language.
The question is: can the parents have it done with the help of their local education system, rather than paying for the evaluation themselves?

Under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, all public school students must participate in annual testing in academic areas outlined in the law. According to NCLB, students with disabilities who have educational handicapping conditions, are protected by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and must be provided with appropriate accommodations necessary to participate in these tests. This provision of the federal law has specific value for children who not only have an educational handicapping condition, but also have "atypical" educational background being internationally adopted post-institutionalized children.

Many parents of the internationally adopted youngsters find themselves in situations when their child demonstrates speech and language issues in the native tongue that may be perceived at school as transient and borderline, i.e. not significant enough, to warrant any intensive speech/language remediation. This misunderstanding typically arises from a lack of exposure of some educators and mental health professionals to the specific needs and problems of international adoptees. But the accumulated experience shows that any delay with timely remedial services is likely to cause magnified problems in the English language learning. To help parents address this issue with their school, below is a template of a letter to your educational facility with detailed explanations that you can bring up when requesting remedial services for your child. You are also welcome to print out the referenced articles and bring them to your school.

Working with adoptive families and children of different ages, we can recommend several institutions which can address certain needs of international adoptees better than others and where a lot of former BGCenter patients find necessary support and remediation.