Celebrating the Anniversary of Adoption

I do not know how old your child is or the circumstances leading up to the adoption so please take this for what it is - my opinion as a domestic infant adoptee. While I can understand you feel like celebrating (and perhaps your child does too), I am glad that my parents never celebrated the day they adopted any of us as we each lost something on our adoption day as well as gaining something. Instead they simply celebrated our birthdays because that was the day we were born - just like anyone else and always showed us how much they loved us kids all year long. Perhaps it is a different time now though... Kind regards,Dickons

I'm not sure how old "Queen" is and that probably makes a big difference. I found this adoption article on this site that may be of interest: [url=http://adoptive-parenting.adoptionblogs.com/weblogs/gotcha-day-celebrations]Gotcha Day Celebrations — Adoptive Parenting[/url] Our soon to be daughter is old enough to tell us what she wants so we will ask her if she wants a party for the anniversary or not.

Thank you for your feedback. The Queen is 21 months old and unfortunately can't provide proper feedback at this time. However, when she gets older, I plan to discuss this with her and do as she wishes. Dickons, I see what you are saying as this is also a day of loss for some adoptive placements (maybe all adoptees - I don't know). The last thing I want to do is Celebrate something that could be a difficult day for my daughter. My daughter was a ward of the state for 6 months before adoption. Thus her sad day (in my eyes - which could be wrong) was several months earlier and definitely a day we will never Celebrate. I had very mixed emotions on that day. Happy for me but so sad for her birth mom. Also, quite sad knowing The Queen could possibly never see her birth Mom again. That being said, I will help her locate her birth mom if that is her desire. As for the adoption day anniversary, I see how Celebrate can be the wrong word to use. I apologize if I offended anyone. I don't want to throw a party. I was thinking more in terms of commemorating the day we officially became a family. I see this as a private day for my daughter and I. A day we could spend together. Thank you for the link to the article Shelly77. That gave me some ideas. We started a tradition last year by going back to the hospital where she was born to take things for the newborns. In addition, we wanted to thank the staff for all their love and support that first month of my daughter's life. As a matter of fact, I just scheduled for us to go back at the end of October. The doctors, nurses, and child development people can't wait to see her. Maybe that becomes our special tradition to commemorate our family day. Just giving back to the community. Dickons, I plan to stay in tune with my daughter's needs. So, I welcome your feedback that this could be a difficult day for her. If so, I would think even more reason for me to take a special day with her. If this does become a sad day for her, I want her to know that I am there for her and always will be.

How about calling it simply Mother/Daughter day and not focus on it being the day? Simply that you want to always have a special day set aside each year for you and her and it is a no holds barred day - say anything - do anything you both want? Kind regards,Dickons

That sounds like a great solution. Thank you for the help!

Congratulations! I have no idea how to celebrate, but congratulations on your first year. I just had the adoption of my daughter made final last month so I have a long way to go to the first year. I too plan on celebrating but have a lot of time to figure it out.

I have two sons by adoption - and we CELEBRATE everything. We celebrate the day they arrived home, the day we met, the day that their adoption became official, and every other possible thing we can think of to celebrate. The thing with celebrating is that your kids will know (as mine do) that everything about them and how they came to us is a reason to be happy. We do it simply at this stage (they are 4). They get to pick cakes out of the cake book and we decorate together and take lots of pictures. We sometimes go out to dinner, or make pizza at home - or mamma's special spaghetti. Take the time to show how grateful you are to be together. all imho.