Grateful for inspiration

Sometimes Ben and I wonder what our experiences will be like just after we pull our daughter from the orphanage.

It is the only place she has really ever known.  She will miss many people, familiar places and untold structural components (like a strict schedule) that we could not replicate even if we wanted to do so.

I would like to highlight just one example. Right now, when we come and visit, we play outside on the orphanage grounds. They have paved and grassy areas with toys, swings, slides, sand boxes, merry-go-rounds, and teeter totters.  We roam together.

When she is bored or wants to change-up the current game, she likes to run off and find someone else to talk to. (We don't blame her, since our communication options with her are limited.). Or, if we give her a neat object, like a cool bag to put stuff in, she wants to run off and show it to someone.  Or, if she suspects that another family might have some delicious treat that we don't have, she might run off and ask for some.  Or, if she just wants some more cuddle time, she might run off, with the understanding that we will eventually chase after her and scoop her into our arms for a hug as we bring her back to the place we were playing.

Her running off is a problem.

Last night, as I was praying about our real fear that she will run off and be lost, I felt inspired to play  the game "red light, green light" with her, using the words "STOP" and "GO" instead. My hope was that we could capitalize on the Russian cognate word "stop" and create a fun but clear understanding of what the word means.  The first few rounds Ben held her in his arms and I was the traffic cop. She picked up on it right away and laughed and laughed as she and Ben alternately advanced and then held still. Eventually she was the cop and even often played as the advancing party on her own. (As the cop, she liked to look over her shoulder and watch us before turning around and stopping us with a growl or an upheld hand.)

We will play this again.  Right now she isn't using the words "stop" or "go" very frequently in the game play but Ben and I use them, and I am sure that she will as we play it again and again.

Our time up to this point has been mostly focused on helping our daughter to become accustomed to us, to learn to trust us, to realize that we are fun people, and to come to understand how much we love her.  For this phase, *we* have done more of the language learning and not found good ways to encourage her English very much.

When we first met her, our daughter was very flighty and couldn't concentrate on any activity for more than 30-60 seconds.  However, her ability to focus has increased slowly over the 6 weeks we have been visiting, and we even notice a difference in the way she looks at us and at her environment.

We are now reaching a crossroads and it is time to begin introducing English.  She is ready to consider it.  Hurray!  Today the stop/go game was a good begining. We will probably show her some other similar games that are word and idea teachers. We already enjoy hide-and-seek and she is learning to count in English.  We may also begin to play revised versions of "Mother May I", "Duck-duck-goose", "Colored eggs", "What time is it, Mr. Wolf", etc.

She is already learning to accept the fact that sometimes I demand her to hold my hand as we walk together somewhere and sometimes she can move along on her own. If we must hold hands, she likes it when we run together to our destination, and she is learning that when we do that we say, "run!"  She says it fairly well now.  Perhaps we will run a lot through the airport, huh?  ;)

Today we feel grateful for an opening to the "running off" issue and an opening to new play together. What a blessing to receive inspiration from a loving Father in Heaven!