|
This has really been on my mind lately ....
We had a 12 year old boy who called us by our first names and tnen one day out of the blue started calling us mom and dad. Everyone was shocked because he maintains a very good relationship with his bio mom.
Now, we have a sibling group who are 8 and 11 and we are hoping to adopt them (this is their hope, too). We were hoping that they would one day just start calling us mom and dad (their parents are not living) but it's been almost a year and no sign of it yet. Every once in a great while our 8 year old will call us mommy M or daddy M but the older child never. When referring to us to other people they even call us their foster parents.
It is beginning to get very frustrtating. When they came into care, their caregiver told them that they would never have to call us mom and dad and that maybe one day they could call us Aunt and Uncle. I don't want to force them to call us anything they aren't comfortable with but at the same time, we are trying to build and be a family. It is sad to me that we will always have children that call us by our first names and it seems like we will never really feel like a family.
How has anyone else who adopted dealt with this issue?
|