There are challenges to adopting an older child from Russia. And even though they will be offset by plenty of rewards (plenty, trust me), some of the challenges will definitely leave you scratching your head. Many of the early ones will occur in school, so I thought I'd take a few posts to look at some of the issues that parents--and the children they have adopted from Russia--have experienced at school, and how they have handled them.

First up, preschool.

Back in February, Rhonda, who blogs at "Worth the Wait", began to write about her daughter's transition to pre-school. Her daughter was four when she came to America last November, but, according to Rhonda, she had been with mostly younger children in the orphanage. That, Rhonda seems to have quickly realized, means that she had no idea how to act like a four year old.

I congratulate Rhonda for realizing that as quickly as she did. It took me almost three months of struggle with my younger son's preschool to realize that the change in group dynamics was one of the problems he was having with preschool. (There were others and I wrote about them here.)

Was it hard for Rhonda's daughter to start behaving like a four year old? Perhaps, but Rhonda says that, because her daughter had to step up and act older at school, she also started to behave more like a four year old in other settings, most noticeably by contributing more around the house. (Rhonda and her husband also adopted a two-year-old boy last November, so having a more helpful four year old has got to be a plus.)

I don’t mean, by writing this, that age is the only factor you should consider when deciding which school group to place your child in. In other situations, and for other age groups, it does carry a fair amount of weight. But looking at your child's behavioral age as well as chronological age can help ease some of the school transition.

(Unrelated to the above: Rhonda and her husband have entered a spectacular photo to a contest on Flickr.com, the online photo-sharing Web site I wrote about the other day in my post about collecting photos for a Russian life book. It's definitely worth a look.)