Developmental delays at arrival and postmenarcheal Chinese adolescents' adjustment.

Developmental delays at arrival and postmenarcheal Chinese adolescents' adjustment. Am J Orthopsychiatry. 2015 Jan;85(1):93-100 Authors: Tan TX, Rice JL, Mahoney EE Abstract Internationally adopted (IA) children often have delays at adoption and undergo massive catch-up after adoption. Before achieving developmental catch-up, however, delays at adoption present a risk for IA children's adjustment, but it remains unknown whether such delays foreshadow IA children's outcomes after catch-up development has completed or ceased. In the current analysis, we utilized menarche as a practical marker to indicate the cessation of developmental catch-up. We investigated how delays at arrival predicted long-term outcomes in 132 postmenarcheal teens (M = 14.2 years, SD = 1.7) who were adopted from China at 16.6 months (SD = 17.1). In 2005, adoptive parents provided data of medical evaluation results on their children's delay status in gross motor skills, fine motor skills, social development, emotional development, and cognitive development. Six years later in 2011, data on parent-child relationship quality were collected from parents, and data on the adoptees' academic competence and internalizing problems were also collected from both parents and adoptees. We found that gross motor delay at arrival predicted academic performance (parent-report: b = -.34, p < .01) and internalizing problems (self-report: b = .26, p < .05; parent-report: b =...
Source: The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Am J Orthopsychiatry Source Type: research