First of all, let me preface this blog with the statement that to my knowledge there are no studies that verify or even suggest that Guatemalan born children as a group are more prone to language delays. Secondly, I’ve heard of several Guatemalan children that have no delays at all – on the contrary they spoke early and well.

But because this was an issue in Ella’s development and it keeps coming up in emails from readers, I’ve blogged about it several times before. My first blog covers the subject of delays and particularly in internationally born children. My ... more

Back in June I wrote a blog about language delays in children adopted from Guatemala. Ella was nineteen months at the time and definitely speech delayed. I’ve yet to find any new information about the subject, but have had an interesting development in Ella’s case regarding the connection between sign language and speech.

One of the most enjoyable learning processes we’ve had with Ella is watching her acquire sign language. She loved it from... more

In my previous blog, I wrote about language delays in Guatemalan born children. I did not do a scientific study and want to stress that it is just my impression that a lot of our children have language delays; not all of course.

Diagnosing language delays is not a particularly difficult process. As a parent you are bound to notice that your child is not making baby sounds as an infant, or beginning to produce words as a young... more

With summer here and most of our children exposed to many hours of sunlight, I thought it timely to remind everyone that, yes; our children’s skin must be protected from the sun even if their skin is darker. While many of us erroneously assume that the people with fair skin, freckles and moles are the ones who get the skin cancer, this is far from the truth. I came across an excellent article in BBC news that reported this:

“Contrary to common perception, people... more