Deep Dark Secrets of Toddler Adoption, #5

#5  Your child will not be perfectly disciplined, and in fact may be more of a hellion than you really care to admit.  I am not saying that to be mean or to call kids name.  I say that because toddler adoption involves a kids who come home displaying less than desirable behaviors.  They have grown up in settings that are not family settings.  Large groups of kids naturally means kids are able to get away with more.  Most orphanages are not trained in child development or managing large number of kids. 

Kids will come home with long lists of behaviors that you may not have expected.  Swearing (in English or their native language), hitting others, choking others, spitting at others, spitting on the floor, throwing food on the floor, throwing objects, kicking, biting, refusing to stay in a time out, refusing to sit with you in a time ine, destroying toys or other household objects simply because they can, being too rough with the family pet, stealing food or other objects, having no fear of real danger like hot stoves or cars in busy parking lots, haing no inside voice and instead maintaining an extremely loud voice level all day long-I'm sure the list could go on and on. 

Yes, many of those are typical toddler behaviors.  But some of them are not.  And even the ones that seem normal for a toddler often leave you as an adoptive parent wondering about if it's really so normal.  There are oftentime pieces of the behavior that seem less than normal and just a little off.  Expecting that your child will have issues with their behavior is important as is having productive ways to deal with it.

With one of mine, we literally spent hours upon hours teaching the concepts of sitting in time out or sitting in time ins.  And there were much time spent covering the words "obey", "this hurts your heart", and "is your heart trying to get its own way?"  There were days when it felt like all I did all day long was discipline.  There were times where I literally forced myself to look at my child at night, while he/she was asleep, so that I could maintain a positive image of that child for the next day.  We are still working on impulse control and connecting consequences to behavior but we've come a long ways from the initial days of giving a direction and watching the child do exactly the opposite.... 3 or 4 time within a 10 minute span.