The aim of the study, which began in 2005 is to identify the situations and adaptation of Icelandic families who have adopted children from countries other than Iceland. The children’s adjustment to family, preschool and elementary school will be examined as well as their adaptation to their peer group and community. The main research questions were: What are the parents’ experiences and expectations regarding their children and their own role as parents and how do these change with time? How were the children received upon their coming to Iceland – by individuals, schools and other institutions? How successful is the children’s adaptation to the peer group, schools and community and to the Icelandic society? What support, formal or informal is available to these parents and their children? In the long run, as the children become adolescents the development of the self identities will also be considered. The theoretical background of the study includes a discussion on attachment theory and the quality of attachment of children to their caregivers in early childhood, especially in the first two years. Most psychologists agree upon that the pattern of attachment is of crucial importance for the child and his development in the coming years. There are some implications that because of adoptive children’s background they might lack this nourishing environment and some of them might have experienced a severe deprivation. If the deprivation is longstanding and serious the children are at risk for developmental complications which might be irreversible. This may be counteracted by a caring and stimulating relationship with their caretakers (Ainsworth, 1989; Bowlby,1988). Therefore it is important to study the adoptive children’s adaptation to preschools and elementary schools and the grown-ups´ – parents, teachers and others – endeavours to ensure its success. Also it is interesting to analyse the attitudes towards these children within the schools and peer groups, f. ex. if they are looked upon as foreigners or Icelanders. It is also interesting to consider whether these attitudes will change as the children grow older. The children´s development of language and self-identity is yet another issue that will be considered in the study. It is important to consider how they manage learning a new language on the basis of a first language, in which some of them have a very limited basis and experience of use. The difference between these children and f.ex. immigrant children in Iceland is that the former generally cease hearing their first language in their near environment. Many of them furthermore have a weak basis in their first language, due to difficult conditions in their country of origin (Hanna Ragnarsdóttir, 2004). It is important to study the effects on a child when its first language disappears suddenly from its environment. Many studies have revealed that there is a close relation between the development of language and self-identity of a child (James and Woll, 2004; Mills, 2004). Adopted children´s self-identity has been studied by Sætersdal and Dalen (1999) and in their findings they discuss the variations of identity development among these children, as well as difficulties that arise for some of the children in their identity development. Situations of adoptive children and their families in Iceland have hardly been studied at all. The children’s health conditions upon coming to Iceland are diverse, ranging from perfect health to cronic disease (Gestur Pálsson, 2003). Nothing has been written about the social or psychological development or school experiences of these children.

The study is a qualitative longitudinal study. The methods are in-depth interviews with parents (every second year), telephone interviews with preschool teachers and elementary school teachers (every second year) and later on the children themselves will be interviewed. The participants are 20 families who have children who came to Iceland in 2002 (10 families) and 2004 (10 families). So far all the families have been interviewed twice, in 2005 and 2007. Also telephone interviews were taken with the older children’s preschool teachers in 2007, at the time when the older children were starting elementary school.

In the paper the main emphasis will be on discussing the preliminary findings of the first two years of the study (analysis of data is now in progress). Issues such as attachments to parents and family, adaptation to peer group and preschool will be discussed, as will the conditions in the preschool settings as regards the preparation, knowledge and understanding of the staff. Furthermore, the parents expectations and apprehension as the older children are about to begin elementary school will be discussed.