“Doesn't make eye contact. Has a severe need to control everything and everyone. Is hypervigilant. Is hyperactive. Is lazy performing tasks. Has trouble understanding cause and effect. Has poor impulse control. Chatters incessantly.” Uncanny.

I’m often asked by a teacher or babysitter, “Does she ever stop talking?” I smile because they think Julia is simply a chatty, precocious child. But it’s not like that. She chatters from the moment she wakes to the moment sleep steals her from her worn-out vocal chords. She chatters incessantly at the table, in the car, while she’s playing. She escalates the chatter when Ricky and I start to have a conversation or when the phone rings and I answer it. She uses the chatter to control her environment.

Ricky has a theory about it. He thinks Julia chatters constantly to soothe herself, to make herself feel present. He thinks silence and stillness scare her because she’s afraid of her internal thoughts. Afraid to be, not by herself, but with herself. She manufactures noise because she fears her inner world. Then, when Ricky and I try to have a pointed conversation with Julia, she will say “What? What?” and avert her eyes. She pretends not to hear the question. She turns the exchange into a power play.

I return to the list on my screen. So far, the first 18 traits are a perfect match. But then I see other characteristics that absolutely don’t describe Julia. She is not “cruel to animals.” She has not shown any “fascination with fire, blood, and gore or an interest in weapons.” She is not “self-destructive,” and even though she does not take care of her possessions herself, nor shows any affection or pride of ownership for a favorite toy or teddy bear, she’s not intentionally destructive in our house. Nobody has suspected she has any “developmental or learning delays” and she doesn't “steal or lie.”

Some psychologists believe that reactive attachment disorder is a legitimate dysfunction that affects children whose maternal bonds were severed or grossly compromised early on. Others debunk it and say it’s a made-up diagnosis. But those who treat it as a viable disorder say a child’s brain gets rewired when her basic needs have not been met or are screwed with. They say the brain actually changes physiologically when children suffer this kind of deprivation.

Parents going through the adoption process are warned that a child who has begun life in an orphanage may be delayed. Ricky and I had steeled ourselves for the likelihood that Julia would need extra time to sit, crawl, walk, speak, potty train. But Julia, a Lilliputian Olympian, hasn't missed a cue. She sat up on her own days after we brought her home. She crawled shortly after that. She walked at 12 months, ran a minute later. She started making words at one year.

She potty trained herself—and I mean herself—within a week of her second birthday. Her teeth grew in before many of the other toddlers’ teeth did in her playgroup, though the front ones were rotten from decay and lack of calcium. She has never been challenged in motor skills or coordination or cognitive ability. Julia’s been on the fast track. The only “delay” she had was growing in her silky, wheat-colored mop. She was bald until 18 months, but I wasn't too worried. I bought her cute hats.