Reply to Adoption--parental obligations regarding child's native language

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[quote=Anonymous]Our older adopted child lost her first language because she refused to speak it once  she had been in the US for 6-8 weeks and knew enough English to talk and play with her new friends and siblings. OUR desire as her parents was for her to maintain contact with her first culture and first language. We love languages and believe that knowing 2 or more languages is important. We perceived her native language as a gift she had been given, a gift that we should do everything to maintain. We had a native speaker with her in person and another one on the phone daily, but she would not speak to either of those people in her first language. Her receptive language lasted much longer (and still is there to some extent), but her expressive native language disappeared because she refused to speak it. They would speak to her in her native language, and she would answer only in English.

Our daughter wanted NOTHING to do with anything related to her first seven years of her life. Her life had been so traumatic for her (years of neglect and deprivation ) that even the language itself triggered her. This was very unexpected and we did not anticipate this, as we intentionally set out to create a situation where she could maintain her first language. She was adamant that she wanted nothing to do with this. To date, she has shown no interest in connecting with friends she knew and remembers from the orphanage who have also been adopted. I maintain those connections with those adoptive families on her behalf, in case she decides one day that she wants to be in touch with the kids she lived with for all those years.

Years have passed and our daughter is now a young adult. She has gone through many years of therapy and has gathered some perspective on her early life, and on the triggers for her ongoing PTSD. She has come to understand what happened, and how her early life was not her fault. She has come to gradually trust that her second family is here for her. She has grieved the loss of her first family, and that loss is very painful. I have journeyed with her in that grief, to the extent that she has confided in me, and I can say that there may be no more profound loss than the loss of one's birthmother and birth family, no matter how old you were when you lost them. It's a huge loss, and the grieving comes and goes in waves.

If I could do one thing for her, it would be to connect her with her birth family so she could know that they love her and always loved her. They could not raise her, but they loved her. They gave her that first language. She heard that language in utero. They spoke that language to her, named her in that language. I would want her to meet them and hear them tell her how much they loved her in that language and, even if she needed an interpreter, she would know what they were saying. Those words can be conveyed across a language barrier. If I could do anything for my daughter, it would be for her to have that hole in her heart healed, to once again be held by the mother who gave birth to her, and not just me, the mother who is with her now. She has two mothers, and needs them both, in order to heal. Being an adoptive mother is one of the most helpless places to be, in many ways. You love this kid so much, and you know they are grieving, and you cannot ease that grief.

The loss of language is part of that. But bigger than the loss of language is the loss of the PEOPLE who once spoke that language to my daughter. She can relearn the language itself, and she is now expressing some interest in that. Language itself can come back. But the PEOPLE who once loved you and spoke that first language to you cannot come back. And that to me is the deeper loss. [/quote]

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