Once a child has had time to get acclimated, parents may wish to bring the missionaries into their home for formal lessons. (It’s hard for me not to call them “discussions” anymore!) If the child speaks English, this is a relatively simple thing to accomplish and can easily be incorporated as the family’s weekly Family Home Evening, for example. If the child does not speak English, or has very limited English, you really have just two options: one, wait six months or so until the child’s English skills are more established, or two, find a translator. Depending on where you live and your access to returned missionaries, this can be a fairly easy approach. In our area, it would be a virtual impossibility! It’s crucial, however, that children be given every tool they need to understand the importance and seriousness of the step they are contemplating. Even though it’s understandable to want to nudge a child along, it’s important that they take the first step themselves.

If all goes as planned, our Haitian daughter, Lulu, will be interviewed for her baptism this coming Sunday after turning eight last week. In her case, I’m jumping the gun a little bit on my own recommendation of waiting six months for better English for a couple of reasons. First, the bishopric has given me permission to be present and translate for her, and second, she lived previously in an orphanage run by LDS staff and was able to attend church and gain a basic understanding of the Gospel. This just goes to show that each situation will be unique and that parents should consider their child’s readiness from every angle.

The time before baptism gives parents of the older adopted child a tremendous opportunity to discuss the healing power of the Atonement with their children. Children who come from traumatic backgrounds often carry around a burden of guilt about the dissolution of the original family, or the abuses they may have suffered there, even though they had nothing to do either. A simple talk about the Atonement obviously isn’t a substitute for skilled intervention of other sorts, but parents can stress to their children that through baptism, they are free to “cast their burdens upon the Lord” and that their baptism will make them new and clean in every way. It offers a fresh start, and this may be comforting to kids who are worn down with the weight of the world – a weight they are far too young to bear.

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