9 BETTER Ways to Celebrate National Adoption Awareness Month

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Flipping the Script on a mainstream National Adoption Awareness Month article. It has lots of advice about adoption. I just picked this one at random called "9 Ways to Celebrate National Adoption Month" and re-wrote it.

1. Retell Your Child’s Adoption Story to Them. How about you allow your child to tell his/her own story? Buy them an art pad or journal to draw or write their adoption story as they see it. Provide them lots of photos and information so they can make sense of their Chapter 1. Include their birth story.

2. Spread Awareness Through Social Media. The article advises to share your family’s adoption story. We don’t need more adoption stories via the eyes of adoptive parents. We need more #adoptee stories.

3. Watch Positive Adoption Movies With Your Family. Watch This is Us instead. Or better yet watch, "A Girl Like Her" by Ann Fessler. Or any documentary produced by an adoptee or birth parent. My favorites are by Jean Strauss.

4. Read a Book Together That Promotes the Values of Adoption. Read adoptee memoirs.  Also, how about donating to a non-profit that helps keep kids in their families instead. Locally, I would recommend Brigid’s Path.

5. Donate Time and Money to a Local Organization that Supports Adoption. Donate time and money to non-profits that support kinship families.

6. Write a Thank You Letter (Yes, the article actually advises you write a letter to the judge, social worker or anyone involved in your adoption!). Instead, write a letter to your legislator supporting adoptee access to original birth certificates. The article also advises thanking your child’s birth parents. It is more important to honor your commitments to your child’s birth parents.

7. Celebrate Your Child’s Heritage. The article has some celebratory advice about incorporating your child's ethnic heritage. However, why not go all out and celebrate your child’s heritage by buying them an Ancestry DNA kit? (It's on sale currently for $59.00.) Even minors can take the test under a protected profile. Also encourage genealogy by starting your child's first family tree on Ancestry.

8. Join Local Events That Encourage Community Participation. You can do this as an adoptive parent by going to a conference where you will meet birth parents and adoptees, and hear their stories.

9. Educate Yourself and the People Around You About Adoption. (i.e. “promote adoption”). Educate people around you about your own personal experience of being adopted, ways to keep families together (i.e. #kinship, legal custody, etc.), and supporting families who foster-to-adopt. Educate that adoption should be the last resort after all efforts of keeping families together have been explored.

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