Holiday Anxiety and Adopted Children

It’s Easter Egg Day at our house. My 4yr old has asked us about Easter Egg Day at least a hundred times over the last week. He’s excited in such a major way that you can’t help but smile over his joy. At the same time that Joey is so excited, our house also has plenty of another kind of excitement. Flowing freely through the house air are enormous loads of anxiety. All of this anxiety shows forth in as many behaviors (or more) as there are children feeling flush with it.

Why so much anxiety? Adoptive parents often could find themselves answering in unison: It must be a holiday. Holidays, for many a source of joy and celebration, can be riddled with anxiety for many adopted children.

Should adoptive parents attempt to celebrate in some of the same ways as the child’s previous families? Should we attempt instead to celebrate a holiday only in different ways as the child’s previous experiences? Even assuming that we might know what those celebrations did entail, adoptive parents find that it seems no matter which decision we make, it appears to be a “losing” choice.

If you do some of the same celebrations, the child might compare families. The child might remember how it was different in their other family. Memories of all sorts come to the surface, all triggering feelings of loss at the very least. Other feelings might also be triggered, such as longing, anger, guilt, or any of a variety of others.

So, maybe you decide NOT to do any of the child’s familiar celebrations. Guess what? ALL of those same feelings and concerns mentioned above follow through to this situation as well!

An Easter example at our house is with my Abby. She once mentioned that one of her birth family members had always given her a package of Peeps in her Easter basket. Her first year with us, I remembered that and bought a package of Peeps for her basket. That year, Easter was a rough day for her, much of it due to expressions of loss over that family member who’d given her the same candies. I figured I’d made a wrong parenting move there, so the next year, I did NOT include a package of Peeps in Abby’s basket. This would make her more happy, yes? No. She had just as horrible of a day, as this time, the LACK of Peeps brought up many feelings about that family member who had always given her those candies.

These behaviors often blindside us parents. We try to provide positive experiences for the child and happy holiday memories. What are we to think when, in the midst of these experiences, we get an angry or explosive child instead? It takes a strong sense of “parenting self” to understand that these behaviors are not a result of our fault. Rather, these come as a part of nearly primal adoption loss. The only positive way to handle these behaviors is to accept where they come from, to accept the child and all the memories and feelings that are part of him. The only really great parenting suggestion I’ve heard is to understand that these issues will accompany many of our family holidays – to learn to accept that as a fact and not to be blindsided instead. As we increase our acceptance, family coping skills as a whole will increase. We can find a new sense of celebration, unique to our very own family, and perhaps better than anything we might have previously imagined.

Other articles to check out:
Foster Child Experiencing Holidays
Holiday Stress
PTSD Over the Holidays

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