Family Age

As we continue to wait for our LOA I am diving into a book called Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child. It is very practical and informative. I am realizing that we will parent this child very differently. A lot of the parenting concepts in the book are counter-intuitive. One thing the book continues to emphasize is "family age". Instead of setting your expectations of the child by their chronological age you consider their "family age" or the amount of time that she has been in your family. When we first bring her home we will consider her to be as needy as an infant who needs to eat every two hours, interrupts family meal time, needs to be held often, and needs attention during the night. Another main emphasis of the book is to be very open about the child's past and adoption and communicate about it on a daily basis. I am sure all those close to us will find the way we parent Mei peculiar! What an adventure raising this little one will be.