Newsletter
#62 for Internationally Adopting Parents
May 24, 2007
PAL Center
Inc.
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Announcements |
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BGCenter
will offer services to
In addition to helping adopted and bilingual children from the countries of Eastern Europe (see Bilingual Extension), the BGCenter is now expanding its services to work with older Chinese children adopted into American families. The BGCenter is hiring school psychologists and speech/language pathologists with native fluency in at least one of major Chinese language dialects and willing to work within Dr. Gindis' methodology of assessment and remediation of internationally adopted children. Please send resumes to systemadministrator@bgcenter.com |
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Courses for internationally adopting parents PAL Center offers varies online courses about internationally adopted children at school for school professionals. These courses may be converted into a distance learning workshop, with the online course instructor taking your questions and answering them during a conference call.
call
PAL Center for details |
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You receive this
newsletter Copyright@2006-2007 |
Latest Articles
from the
International Adoption Articles Directory
The articles by Child Custody Secrets
Preparation for child custody court ordered mediation
In Child Custody disputes Mediators help collect complete information about each parent and organize this information in a useful way. During mediation all history of both the parents is extremely useful. All aspects including childhood, past divorces, past history, parent’s history, parents’ martial status, siblings, relations with siblings, history of crime, domestic violence, etc. are also taken into consideration. You as a parent must be prepared to show yourself in the best possible light.Are you prepared for your child custody hearing?
Although the courts have the best interests in mind, there can’t be anyone more important in making the best decision for their children than parents. Parents should try and settle their Child Custody issues outside the courts. A custody decision arrived on your own with two agreeing parents is more desirable than the one which is disputed a determined by the court.
International adoption presents a tremendous long-term stress not only for adopted children, but for the parents and other members of the family. If something was not going well in your relations with the spouse, the chances are high that an adoption will put your relations to a further test rather than eliminate or even tone down the issues. Thus, divorce cases among adoptive families are not so rear. This issue of the newsletter is entirely devoted to child's custody and the ways to minimize the negative effect of divorce on a traumatized child whose hope to have a stable and loving family is shattered again.
What is Custody?
Who makes the decisions post separation?
Improving eleventh hour agreements - custody and access
In view of the risk involved, that the decision may not reflect the wishes of the parent, lawyers and parents seek to achieve a settlement, right up to the last minute. Make the best of it...Imagine… A collaborative approach to divorce
Sometimes life just throws a curveball... If divorce is in the picture, do so in a way that minimizes the risk to children...
Can a child choose which parent to live with?
Children sometimes have their own view on living with a parent, but at what point does their view begin to carry weight...
Q. Do I have the right to request a damaging and inaccurate psychological or any other report be removed from my child's school record?
A. Yes and no. You have the federally guaranteed right to inspect your child's educational records maintained by the school. You also have the right to request that any records that are inaccurate or misleading be changed. Read more ...
Q. Our son is a smart, well adjusted child who was doing quite well in his first grade where he was placed on arrival based on his age. It was an absolute surprise for us when we were informed recently that the school recommends to hold him back in the first grade next year because he "is almost half a year behind his peers in cognitive language development." What should we do: accept school recommendation and hold him, or insist on 2nd grade placement because I feel that he is catching up with his English language very well for one year?"
A. It's very important to do the right thing at this moment, because the 2nd grade is indeed the time when certain mastery of cognitive/academic language will be needed to our students to understand explanations in the class, answer "why" and "how" questions, operate with basic abstract notions, etc. And this is the time when lots of issues based on cognitive language delays become apparent. So, a possibility that your school personnel does see something troublesome in your child's performance is quite real. On the other hand, your child is only 1 year in the country and in the family; apparently he was advancing pretty well if he is now functioning at the middle of he first grade level as far as his cognitive language goes. What would be seen as a disturbing problem for a native English language speaker, is in fact a great achievement for a child adopted from another country a year ago!
Are there any negative sides to being held in the same grade without real need? Obviously, emotional factor (separation with class mates and favorite teachers, a blow to self esteem, etc.) should be considered, but no less important is the fact that you will lose this possibility of holding the child back next time if it becomes really needed.
The most important question to consider before making a decision is: will holding back help if your son does have learning problems? Won't it be a wasted year of just repeating the same instead of working on correction of specific problems? You will be able to arrive at the right decision having find out first what the current developmental status of your child is: do you witness temporary new language acquisition difficulties, or are there genuine learning disabilities which just begin surfacing and which would require special remedial programming for the child, not just holding back for another year. Only a psycho-educational assessment can give you a definitive answer.
Boris Gindis, Ph.D.
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