Another tool that you can use to communicate with your newly adopted child is a pocket dictionary or translator. Again, this would require literacy on the part of your child, so if they are not yet literate in their native tongue, a picture dictionary would be a better choice. I will discuss both options here.

We were told by many families on a Yahoo group I belong to for older adopted children that a pocket translator or dictionary was a tool that saved the day for many of them. It works similar to the translator on the internet that I discussed here. Pocket translators can run anywhere from 50.00 US dollars to 500.00 US dollars depending on how many bells and whistles they have.

The most expensive translators can translate entire sentences and have over 83,000 common sentences already programmed into them. One that many families repeatedly recommend is the Besta 618. It does everything short of washing your dishes and doing your laundry. I looked at one, but personally didn’t have that much money to drop on one and I’ll tell you why... my son thinks he is an emperor.

If you don’t know anything about Chinese emperors, they think they rule your household. It doesn’t matter that our emperor is only 11 years old and weighs a mere 60 lbs soaking wet…he thinks he is the boss. As such, he took the much less expensive pocket dictionary we purchased in China (50.00 US dollars) and password protected it. He was quite proud of himself, although it prevented me from being able to use the translator to communicate with him.

After a stern “talking to” via our guide in Wuhan, Caleb showed me the password and I was able to change it to one of my own so it cannot be turned on without my password. The problem is, the instructions for the one I bought were only in Chinese,(the more expensive ones have users manuals in English as well) and there were other areas of the dictionary that could also be password protected, so he decided to add passwords to those areas as well. I told him he needed to either remove them or show me the passwords. The emperor’s reply? “You won’t show me your password, so I won’t show you mine.”

Of course he thought he had the best of me, but instead, it resulted in me taking the translator away and telling him we would have to use the picture dictionary instead. Score: Empress 0, Emperor 0. I needed to show him who was the boss, but now we can’t use it for communication.
Clearly, if you are going to use a pocket dictionary, you need to have a mature enough child who desires to communicate more than he desires to be in control.

The more expensive translators function similar to the internet translating sites mentioned here, albeit with many more functions. You can watch movies, play games, use them as a PDA, etc., but once again you need to have a mature enough child whom you can trust with a 500.00 toy.

They will translate sentences for you so communication is easier, but again you have to be careful of the language you use or the message will not be clear. Since we do use the internet translating sites, I am glad I didn’t drop the 500.00 on a more expensive pocket translator, but at the same time, the internet is not as portable, so when we are driving down the road in the car, I am far more limited in how I can communicate with Caleb short of gestures.

Enter the picture dictionary, which is portable, and is also excellent for children who cannot yet read.

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