The Minnesota International Adoption Project, which is part of the Institute of Child Development in Minneapolis, just released their most recent newsletter.

This is an interesting project. Here's how it got started:

In 1997, the needs of this population inspired a group of child development physicians and professionals from the University of Minnesota to pool their knowledge about internationally adopted children. Recognizing that no one had a complete picture of the successes or needs of the 4000 internationally adopted children who had arrived in Minnesota between 1990-1998 dialogue was initiated with persons in the adoption community. With the support and assistance of adoptive families, adoption agencies and Minnesota's Department of Human Services, a grant for the International Adoption Project survey and family registry was designed and submitted to the National Institute of Health. In 1999, the NIH recognized the unique opportunity we have in Minnesota to capture such important information and funded the project.

Since 1997 they've collected data from 2500 families who've adopted internationally. In 2003 they got another grant to study brain development in internationally adopted children. The information in the most recent newsletter (and previous newsletters) is an analysis of data collected from the first study.

There are currently 3800 families on their registry and they need more. To add your family to the registry send an e-mail to iap@umn.edu. I'm going to sign up our family.

Here are some results from their data analysis:

First, some definitions:

PI = Post institutionalized children. These are children adopted after age 12 months and who spent more than 75% of their life before 12 months in an institution.

EA = Early adopted children. Children adopted under 8 months of age, having spent no more than 2 months in an institution.

BC = Children born into their families.

Verbal and performance IQ:

--Although PI children as a group perform within the normal range, they have (as a group) a slightly lower mean IQ score than non PI children. Their mean IQ score is 117, while the EA and BC's mean score is 125. Typically, the difference lies in the PI children's vocabulary and verbal scores that are holding them back.

--PI children's cognitive problems are specific, not general. This means that the PI children, when compared with the EA and BC children, tended to score as well as the EA and BC children on most tests, but on specific tests they tended to show differences. One was in the area of bilateral coordination (doing different things with different sides of the body), and another concerned memory tasks.

Go to part 2.