[neve]

We are in the process of adopting a 13 year old girl and 9 year old boy. They will be moving in with us before the adoption is final. I have read other threads that say leave it up to the children to decide when to call us mom and dad. However, do we start from the beginning calling them our children and is it awkward for us to be referring to them as our children when they aren't calling us mom and dad yet?

[Singlemom619]

They are your kids... so if anyone asks you can say "these are our kids Sally and Betty" or just say "this is Sally and Betty" and when someone says "are they yours" you say yes.

I've had kids either call me mom or call me Ms. X (just the first initial of my last name)... Or Ms. FirstName....

I didn't like them calling me Ms. Fulllastname because I teach and that's what my students call me and it's less personal in a way...

Also - if you don't call them your children - they WILL pick up on that. I made the mistake of calling my son my "foster son" when he was first placed with me and he knew that made him different. When I dropped the "foster" part one day he looked at me differently and I've never used that word since.

[MilehighDad]

After hearing all the advice and then going through two, I personally think an adoptive placement should be handled differently than a foster placement. I think our girls needed to know that we were "claiming" them hard and fast from the very beginning. On the other hand, they were only somewhat prepared to do the same for us. With our teenager, we asked her the first day if we could introduce her as our daughter and she said yes. For our preteen, we simply told her from Day 1 that we considered her to be our daughter and we would introduce her that way.

For how they addressed us, we told both of them that they could either use our firstnames or Mom and Dad. Our oldest never once called us anything but Mom and Dad, and our 11-year old took about a week to switch over. In that week, we only had a few hours with her face-to-face and then talked to her on the phone every night.

Hope this helps, both girls need to hear that we love them, that we are never going to give up on them, and that it is permanent over and over. You can read their ages in my signature, but they're both still struggling to truly accept those things.

[crick]

I agree that you claim them right from the start. Personally I think that means you claim them now at this minute in your mind and in your preparation to motherhood.

Congratulations on your new family!

[peregrinerose]

We are in the process of adopting a 15 year old boy and have been working with him for almost 4 months, 3-5 days a week. We started introducing him as 'our son' right off the bat. We left it up to him to call us whatever he saw fit. It started out with first names, but about 2 months into the relationship, he switched to Mom and Dad.... all on his own, his choice. Frankly, we don't care what he calls us as long as it's respectful in nature. He's been through a lot, so bonding has to be on his terms and his timeline, not so much ours.