For some reason, Children’s day is celebrated on different dates around the world but in the USA it is early June, so I decided to connect to it and enjoy that day or even that month, understand why it exists, what it does and what can we do, as parents!

I will also share with you a real personal experience I have never wrote about as a foster mom…

A bit of basic info on Children day celebration

Children’s Day was established to honor and promote the welfare of the world’s children. Universally it is celebrated on November 20th, but many different countries around the world have their own day set aside for its observance. For instance, in Haiti it is celebrated on April 12th, while in Germany it is celebrated on September 20th. In the United States, it is celebrated on the second Sunday of June.

A great opportunity to celebrate children and their rights, right to be respected, right to be loved, right to be saved!

The concept of Children’s Day was first announced by UN General Assembly in 1954 to bring children of all races, castes, and creeds together, and for the welfare of children across the world. UNICEF World Children’s Day celebrates the youngest minds of the world by encouraging brotherhood and fraternity and highlighting the importance of the well-being of children.

Over the years, Children’s Day around the world has promoted a number of causes, such as eradicating HIV/Aids, promoting the education of all children, and more. On November 20^th 1989, the UN General Assembly signed a treaty to protect the social, civil, economic, health, cultural, and political rights of children to deal with child-specific needs for children across borders and act in their best interest.

Unicef work today:

Universal Children’s Day is a huge part of the work carried by UNICEF (United Nations Children Fund) to raise awareness on the welfare of kids around the world. Here’s why this is more than just a holiday.

1. Children Are the Future
2. Focuses on Rights of Children
3. Spotlight on Problems Faced by Children

What can we do on Children day celebration?

• Spend Quality Time With our Kids. We take care of them, feed them, make sure they get education but do we spend 10 minutes a day quality with him or her, without a screen, just to look at each other, talk or play? This sounds easy but the reality is tougher. We work hard, days are full and usually there are few children at home, each with his activities on afternoons. The impact of the quality time, short but quality is huge. I personally love to play, strategy games, outdoor, indoor, cards, almost anything that I and they enjoy!

• Donate to Unicef + or buy and make an impact. Here are sites you can purchase gifts and make an impact! Each site has his own causes…

• Get Creative together:

1-either make a subscription at Kiwi Craft ,  offering  high-quality award-winning products across four brands for young makers ranging in age from 3 to 16+:

30% off with code Share30

2- purchase Pixie Crew products HERE.

• Cook together –  We can connect through cooking. This means creating together, cooperating (check post about cooperative play), help each other…

Interesting facts about Children day celebration?

1. Instead of Children’s Day, France celebrates Family Day on January 6^th.
2. Children’s Day is a national holiday in some places, like Turkey and Argentina.
3. Children’s Day is celebrated as 14^thNovember in India, to pay respect to Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, who was immensely fond of kids.
4. Australia celebrates ‘Children’s Week’, starting from the Saturday before Universal Children’s Day and ending on the following Sunday.
5. International Children’s Day was proclaimed in Geneva, Switzerland on June 1^st,1925.

Important Data I found on Unicef site I thought I would share!

My personal way of taking care of a child and celebrating Children Day?

As I child in France, I remember I subscribed to Unicef. I was receiving a magazine and reading about their actions and stuff they did… I actually forgot that fact… maybe that explained my decision later on at 38 years old, as a mom, to register to become a foster family.

I have never wrote about this so far (but there is always a first time!)  but I feel receiving a foster child is saving a child in a sense, saving his soul, providing him the basic each child deserves: love, care, the feeling there is mom or/and dad always there for him, someone to ask for help and trust. That basic thing is not obvious for foster children.

They have to fight and not to give up, many times, they had no one adult caring for them, coming when they cried. This is maybe why my little boy still says “I hate babies”.

He entered our family when he was 1 year old and he is now almost 6. I have to admit, a real journey as a mom.  I may one day even write a book about this.

will we get attached? should we? how to get attached when you are not sure if he will be gone soon (back to his biological parents)? How do you handle the “maybe” and “for now” and how do you protect your biological girls from breaking down in case he leaves. How to give 100% love as a mom knowing he may be gone?

All this I thought is easy and obvious; I thought nature of being a mom, as long as you take care, you’ll love him as your own child. Well….not that simple… we are complex creatures…

Today, after therapy, understanding, looking inside and raising him, I can conclude (at least for now): it took me time to really connect. Why?

1-Because I protected myself and my girls (I was not aware of this of course. that was unconsciously). I was making them and me ready for the day they would announce to us “he needs to go back to his biological parents”.

2-because he has a mom and you are always told “mom, there is just one!” I felt I would take her place and I refused to do so. I always respected her. She gave him birth and loves him, wants him back. He meets her once a month. I know she loves him and he loves her and I did not want to replace her so how will there be space for 2 moms, real moms who love him?

I finally understood that he has a mom but she cannot act as one fully (for whatever reasons) so he deserves a mom who can fully be there for him because every child deserves at least that. Isn’t it why we celebrate Children Day? To take care of children!

And that’s when I took the real courage to say “I will be it”.

I will love him no matter what the future will dictate and I will act as a mom for him since he deserves it… 

I learned there is space for 2 moms, who really love the same child!

I learned to accept my own mom and how she raised me, with lots of love and care but not enough deep talks, emotional skill to sit down and talk, share and listen, as I always wanted and needed.

Thanks to being a foster mom, I learned so much about myself, my husband, my girls, my abilities to change and understand, my anger from the past and this is for me how I wish to share this Children day celebration!

If you ask me what are my dreams? Many…but 2 of them have so much to do with kids around the world….

• Become one day a house that accepts children and babies in the middle of the night when they have to be taken from their homes and until they find foster families (this is where our boy was living during his first year of life)
• Travel around the world from children houses to other institutions for children in need and hug children, bring them games, play and smile.

My first amazing experience was in Kenya Africa (the children were not in need but the experience was so huge I wrote about it here)

Lets play and enjoy raising our kids…thanks to Children Day celebration!