Today is my son’s adoption day. His adoption day was
actually February 29, but since there is no February 29 this year, we
“celebrate” it today.
really. We announce, “Today’s your adoption day…whoo hoo!” And that’s about it.
Probably because his adoption day occurs only two days after his birthday. And
we do celebrate his birthday (in the photo at left, he’s admiring the a new quilt his birth grandma made for his birthday and delivered in person).
who have been waiting in foster homes or orphanages, I imagine that adoption
day might be quite an important event.
Families magazine included a column by Karen Moline in which she takes
issue with the use of the term “Gotcha Day” to describe adoption day. She finds
the term offensive, parent-centered, and smacking of “acquiring a possession.”
seems to have been coined recently, with the first International Gotcha Day
celebrated
Yet the term has already “become thoroughly entrenched in adoption-speak,”
writes
Moline’s column
sparked quite a response from readers, who wrote in by the dozen to agree or
disagree with her. Some say that the term “adoption day” doesn’t differentiate
clearly enough between their children’s placement and finalization dates.
friendlier” version of “adoption day.” They equate the term with a permanent,
safe place.
inappropriate and cheap” – “insufficient for expressing the importance of a
child’s homecoming.”
day,” because in our family, that term best describes what happened. While we’re
thrilled that we were able to welcome our children into our family via
adoption, we don’t see the need to make a big deal about adoption one
particular day of the year.
so, what do you call it? If you don’t celebrate, why not?
Additional posts about Gotcha Day:
The History Behind Gotcha Day
Ways to Celebrate Gotcha Day
For more articles about adoption, please visit my Web site, www.laurachristianson.com and my Christian Adoption blog at adoption.com.
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
Of our 6 adopted children (now adults), 1 was USA and the others international. We celebrated “Airplane Day”. Each child was given a toy airplane as close to the description of the one he/she arrived on. A cake was baked, candles used, the plane used as a cake-top, friends invited, and everyone belted out, “Happy Airplane Day to You…”. It continued to be a tradition into the childrens’ teen years (they were all school-agers when they arrived) and then it wasn’t “cool” anymore. I still remember it with much fondness. Thanks for asking…
Kind thoughts, Lois
We do not have an adopted child (yet), but we intend to call it an xxx-day, where xxx stands for the name of our child. So if we have a girl named Jenny (just a name, nothing we have in our mind!
, it will be Jenny-day! It makes it personal for the child, but also for us, because that’s the day we got our child ‘Jenny’! I think it sounds special and it is still different than a birthday…
“gotcha day” makes me uncomfortable too. Since big occassions are usually marked as an Anniversary, I was thinking of referring to the day Dylan came into our life as our Adoption Anniversary.
Our celebration is usually referred to as our “family anniversary” and is based on the date that the Russian court’s decision was finalized. We also ususally make a day of it by doing something special like visiting a museum, Chuck E Cheese, or some other such place the kids can have a memorable experience and relate that day to being special on the calendar.
I am Mom to three, two of whom were adopted in 1975 and 1978. We have celebrated ‘Gotcha Day’ since the first anniversary of the day we brought our first child home. How? Happy Gotcha Day!
I also used to go to Church to thank God for the girls, and to pray for their parents, but over time, our schedules often prevented the Church part. I still prayed for the birthparents. My son once asked why HE did not have a Gotcha Day…I told him that his bday WAS his Gotcha Day.
We celebrated their birthdays in big ways, always.
Gotcha Day did not take the place of their birthday. It was simply a way for US as family to mark the day that each came home. It seldom went outside our family until the girls began to talk about it to their friends.
Just wanted to let you know that Gotcha Day was NOT just coined in 2005. And it is fine if people take issue with it and call it something else. We liked it, it worked for us, and we will continue to use it.
i think that gotcha day is fine. people are way too uptight these days. if you don’t like the phrase “gotcha” then don’t use it and let others who are fine with it use it. end of story.
We celebrate Gotcha Day every year. That day is very special to our daughter. She doesn’t associate it with possession. She associates it with the physical act of traveling to Vietnam to get her. She is thrilled that we went “to get” her.
“Happy You Came” Day is what my (adoptive) mom and I call it, and we celebrate it on the anniversary of the day she and Dad picked me up from the adoption agency.
(Personally, I think that “Happy You Came” sounds MUCH nicer than “Gotcha”, and I can’t believe no one else uses it!)
We don’t celebrate adoption day in order not to remind him that we are not his original parents. Panrenting sometimes iclude trying to make the children forgent someting
You have got to be kidding. This is the most inane and ignorant statement I’ve ever heard. People are offended and take exception to the day their wait was over and their adoptions were finalized to make a child a forever part of their family? That is what I take exception to- not the the term “gotcha day”.
There is too much political correctness in the world these days. Must we politicize our children to make them an object of political correctness because someone may be offended by them?
It’s time to get over a few things and stop being so touchy about what to call this or that and therefore complicating everything we celebrate, say or do in life. As an adoptive mom myself to a wonderful little boy that I waited 5 years of my life for with my husband, Gotcha Day is very special to us and will be celebrated as the day we became a family, forever. It is the day we finally became mommy and daddy. It is the day our little boy became part of our lives. It was the day that when he wrapped his little hand around my finger I was in love, head over heels for him. There is no way in the world I’m going to not celebrate it and commemorate the special day with him as he grows up. It’s not offensive. Next to mommy and daddy, gotcha day is one of the most special words I know.
To me Gotcha Day refers to the day of placement (they day he came to live in my home). Adoption day is the day custody was made official by the courts.
We celebrate Gotcha Day every year. It is a very happy day and one that both my boys look forward to celebrating. We have friends over and have cake to mark the day.
If it offends some people tough.I am tired of working hard not to offend others and wind up shortchanging myself in the process. No more. Gotcha Day it is. It does not imply children are possessions.
We have celebrated “gotcha day” for the past 10 years. It is the day my daughter came to live with me.
I don’t think it’s parent centric. I got her and she got me on the same day.
BTW, we waited 4 years after that to have the adoption finalized. We recognize that day, but it’s not as important as the day we came together.
We do not yet have our adopted child but will use the phrase “Gotcha Day” We think it is cute. After all it is the day your adopted child was born, the day you got to hold your adopted baby/child for the first time or got to go get your adopted child from another country. What ever day you decide to make your special day is up to you. Just have fun with it what ever you decide to call it.
Our son was placed with us in the delivery room, his birthday. Our “gotcha day” is the date of his adoption finalization. We look at it this way: it’s the day his adoption of us as his parents was official, not the day we officially “got” him. For us, this works. We like the term and will continue to use it.
We don’t see our son as a possession, but he does possess our hearts, minds, and souls, and that’s not a bad thing.
I don’t particularly care for the term “Gotcha Day” but I don’t see anything offensive about it at all. I agree that people are so overly sensitive and need some “cause” to get worked up about. I don’t feel that it makes a child out to be a possession. Like the poster above mentioned it is a day where a parent and child get each other.
There is nothing offensive about the term “gotcha day”. We have been celebrating it every year since we adopted our oldest daughter in 2001. I believe adoptive parents have been using the term way before that and certainly way before 2005. Call it what every you want to personally, and celebrate it however you desire. For our family, we light a candle and say a prayer for her birth-family’s well being, thanking them and god for our good fortune. We make a promise to our daughter that we will always love her and never leave her. We give her a small gift that we purchased in China while we were there during the adoption process. Our daughter thinks it is pretty cool to have two days to celebrate. While I often remind friends when that special day comes about, we don’t celebrate it outside of our family. We don’t throw her a big party with all of her playmates. But we do acknowledge and celebrate it. Today is my youngest daughter’s GOTCHA DAY. We are excited and will go through our ritual with her. When our daughters get older, they can decide if they want to acknowledge and/or celebrate their special day. But my wife will every year for both of our children.
Every story is unique and special, just like every child. For us, our daughter’s official day of adoption, which was 6 months after the day we got her, will be “Family Day”. It’s the day we officially became a family and it’s the real thing we are celebrating. So, this year we’re going to Sesame Place because my daughter LOVES Elmo! Next year, we’ll do something else together. God has blessed us with the gift of parenthood and our daughter is the most precious priceless gift.
We just celebrated our 2nd “Gotcha Day”. Gotcha Day is a day of joy at our house. We have family and friends over and always have cake! Our daughter loves to say “it’s my gotcha day”. The day we got her and the day she got us! I don’t find the term insulting at all. It’s celebratory in our eyes.
Warm Regards-
Jennifer
The statement that GOTCHA DAY is offensive is offensive in itself. How can the celebration of the day your family became a forever unit and permanent situation through adoption be offensive? Especially to an adoptive parent!?! THAT is more offensive than celebrating GOTCHA DAY! If your that ashamed of your adopted child being adopted that you can’t even celebrate the day that they became a permanent part of your family then why on earth did you adopt to begin with?!
It doesn’t matter what you call it, but the term GOTCHA DAY does not offend me. I am an adoptive parent. The day the judge looked me and my husband in the eye and said it was a done deal, forever, permanent and that he was our son was one of the best days of my life. My other best day? The day that little baby was born- that baby who was to be our son! There is no way I would ever hide that from him or think that his finalization into our family was something to hide, forget or deceive him about by hiding his adoption or deliberately hiding the fact he was born to another mother and has another family out there somewhere even though he is our child and part of our family now. That is ludicrous! We will do every year what we started last year for his first GOTCHA DAY. We will go to dinner at a restaraunt (rare treat for us since we don’t often). Then we will allow our little boy to pick out a treat of HIS choosing on his special day. He was 20 months old on his first one. He will be nearly 3 this year when it comes around. It doesn’t matter if his day falls close to Christmas. It doesn’t matter that his birthday is three months after Christmas. We would no more skip Christmas or his birthday if he were born on the day of the holiday anymore than we will skip GOTCHA DAY. It is something to celebrate. It celebrates his permanency in our family. It celebrates him being special because he had two mothers who love him. There is no way after struggling in different avenues after 5 years that I wouldn’t celebrate my son. That first day I held him was the most precious day of my life. I still remember how tiny he was and the smell of his newness, his sweetness and how special that baby who is now my little boy was and is. There is no way that day at 8 months old when he was made a permanent part of my family that I would forget that or not celebrate that.
K,
I don’t think the writer of the article in “Adoptive Families” took issue with celebrating the day an adopted child arrives in a family; I think she just doesn’t like the term, “Gotcha.”
The word sounds too flippant to describe the momentous occasion of welcoming a child home.
The writer of that article also made no mention of trying to deceive an adopted child by hiding the fact that he/she was adopted or has birth parents. That is an entirely different issue, and one that we discuss often on this blog.
Here are links to some posts that discuss that topic:
When Should I tell my child he was adopted?
http://tinyurl.com/cof5z3
Telling Your Child About His/Her Adoption
http://tinyurl.com/dfeklq
When Should You Tell Your Child He Was Adopted (lots of discussion on this post)
http://tinyurl.com/dkfjy9
I love the ideas all of the commenters are sharing about how they make THE DAY (whatever you want to call it) special.
“I think she just doesn’t like the term, “Gotcha.” The word sounds too flippant to describe the momentous occasion of welcoming a child home.”
She needs to get over it because I don’t think that most adoptive families, at least ones I know, take exception to it. GOTCHA is about the day they got to come home to your family. GOTCHA is about becominga family- forever. Everything else in our world has been made too politically correct. Must we do it to our family structure and names for things and people within our families? I don’t think so.
First of all, on the question of whether GOTCHA DAY is offensive. Honestly, I don’t think about it. I don’t think it suits us personally but I don’t think it is offensive. What we do is, we have two boys who have “gotcha days” in April and May, just a few weeks apart. And rather than celebrating two separate days each year, we chose to pick the first weekend in May to celebrate Smith Family Day. Yes, you could argue “duh, everyday is Family Day” but this day is labelled Smith Family Day because it represents the time (which by the way is spring time, a time for rebirth) when we first became a family (with our first child) and then grew into a bigger family (with our second). Although we’d like to think we show our love and appreciation to our boys, it is a clearly marked celebration that says, “we are a family because of you.”
Very interesting to read this blog continue over 3 years. Comments to some others: a) shame on you if you feel you and your child need to forget their past…. and how ignorant you are to think that they will never find out…. and when they do, they will be ashamed of themselves and you because that is what you taught them about themselves. I created a book about my boys and their pasts (and by the way, they are only 2 and 4) and this includes their foster mothers. These are facts of their lives and we love them for who they are. b) amen to Jennifer (and several other bloggers) who understands the larger picture of the significance of the day, and not whether we should find GOTCHA DAY offensive or not.