[csimmons]

We are moving towards adoption with our foster daughter. She is now 16 months old and TPR is to be filed this month. Bio-mom has not been cooperative with her treatment plan and there is no feelings from the team that mom will surface to fight.

My question is this... how will a name change effect our little girl at this age? Anyone out there who can give some suggestions on how to get her used to her new name? Anyone had problems with this?

Thank you.

[mckenna]

there are lots of opions on this, so i say go with your heart and i will share what i did. i got my son as a foster placement at 4 months. i used the name his mom gave him until the day she terminated her own rights. i knew it would be awhile before his adoption was final (ended up taking another year). it was right before christmas. i knew i would be home with him for 5 days (he was 18 months by the way). i just started using his new name and when he returned to daycare after the holidays i told everyone what to call him. the kids in the class had a harder time adjusting than he did. now at 3.5 years old, he does not even remember having another name, even when we are around someone with his old name. good luck and congrats on your daughter.

[sweetpea_59]

Always remember to let the child know his or her real name when they grow up.

[Malificient]

csimmons, here's an idea, since the tpr is very close, why not start calling her by the new name while using her birth name as her middle name. For instance, let's say her birth name is Renee. And your wanting to change it to Amanda. When you talk to her address her "Amanda Renee." Continue doing this for a while, she'll start recognizing the new name, and once the adoption becomes final, and you know she's 'forever yours...." you can begin to drop the renee off the end of her first name and she'll be known as Amanda there after? make sense....? that's just my thoughts. We plan on fostering a child first, and when we find a child we are able to adopt, between the ages of 2 and 6 yrs. that's what we are planning on doing. Tell her we love her birth name, we will keep it on her birth certificate, but when we adopt her we will give her a new middle name and she will have our families last name as well. Once the tpr. has occured and were in the waiting phase to adopt, we will start addressing her by her birth name with her new middle name, IF she's comfortable with that idea. If not, or if her birth name is just unappealing, we could always come up with an endearing nick name. there's alot of ways to make a new child entering into your home and lives feel like part of her new family. Hope this has helped answer your question. ps. I know some posters may disagree with my thoughts, they may say, "she's 5 yrs. old, you have no business changing any part of her name." I say, if the child wants to and if we her new parents, want to, than that's what is important. Your not taking away her identity, your giving her something special and personal, if she's old enough, she should have a say on what a new name for her can be, too! malificient.

[mj77]

I personally don't think it's a bad idea to change a name at that age. Perhaps you will find different cute nicknames to call her and that's not detremental to her and she still responds I'm sure. I like the middle name idea as stated in the previous post. We, however felt we needed to change the entire identity of our son to protect him when he was about 14 mo. old. He was fine with it. We mostly call our son "Buddy" so it was a good transition name too. He will know what his birth name was. I think when you adopt from the system, you need to think about if there is a need to protect your child's identity. I would also recommend changing her social security number after finilization.

[InionGrinn]

Without delving further I must echo sweetpea49 about making sure your child knows what her birthname was before you decided that you had a *better* name for her. You may be setting yourself up for some itentity issues in your child's future.

Chrissy, formerly known as Mary.

[leenab]

I have adopted 2 sons as older toddlers and changed both of their names. So far our experience has been great. Both Om and Raj love their new names. But I think it's really a situation to situation call.

I can tell you our reasons. Raj was severly abused and neglected by his parents. So his old name was associated in his mind with being abused and neglected. We liked his old name, but he really wanted a new name. Raj was 3 1/2 when he was placed with us. So we explained adoption to him as did his caseworker. We read him tons of adoption storybooks and started to prepare him for a new last name. He asked why just a last name and wanted a first name. So we talked about it and asked his cw about it. And told him one day he'd get a new name. Then we just started using his new name.

Well Om, he had never really been called his real name. He was in another foster home and removed for safety reasons. There he had a different name, not the one biomom named him. But when he came into our family at age 2yrs 8 months we tried calling him his name from his previous placement and he would tantrum anytime he heard it. So we started calling him his real name from biomom. So that was really the first time he was introduced to it. It was his experience that his real name was introduced when he had to leave his 1st home where he'd been almost since birth and then come to a new home with strangers. He had no attachment to his bioname. So we discussed changing his name with him. And decided to change it as well.

Changing names doesn't happen overnight, trust me. There's a lot of work involved in the process. Both Om and Raj have extensive life books about their old names and new names and they both can tell me about what it was like to be their old names. Their old names aren't a secret at all. Raj will sometimes look a picture of himself and say that when that picture was taken his name was K and he didn't like that name. Om also knows his old name and reacts to it as well. We've watched home movies we made of the boys when they first came to us and Om hates to be called M. He doesn't like that he had to be M before. And we explain to him that we loved him when he was M and love him now that he's Om. He just associates so many bad feelings with his old name.

I really think it was in my sons best interest to change their names. We've talked to their therapists about it and in the beginning they were very cautious, but have seen how the boys are able to handle their new names.

-LeenaB

[csimmons]

Thank you all for posting. These are some very good ideas.

Our reasons for changing her name is that her biomom gave her a very unusual name which is mis-pronounced frequently and difficult to spell for others. Secondly, there is safety / identity issues involved. Biomom has a violent temper, on drugs, and who knows what she would be capable of. It's scary because she knows where we live, where we go to church, etc... we've thought about moving, changing our phone numbers, etc... once everything is finalized. The new social security number is an excellent suggestion and one we will definitely proceed with.

[sweetpea_59]

I would agree in changing the babies name, but also the system should also have the information on the child on where the child came from. If the child was abused, the safety of the child comes first, and I sure wouldn't want the abuser anywhere near this child ever. Nobody has the right to hurt a child in any form, and it really bothers me when you hear a parent has a child in froster care and the child has been abused by this parent, and this child can not be put up for adoption while he or she are young, because of the parents rights. Also, this can go on for years, and then the child is a mess in a lot of cases, and they do get lost in the system. This really breaks my heart. I also believe that a child that was giving up for adoption, by a loving parent ,should have the right to know about the adoption when they are old enough to understand. I have a sister out there somewhere 50 or so years old, In my mothers case, she was 15 at the time which meant she had no rights. My Grandparents had the say who gets the child, mom was hurt. My mother lost four children, my half sister out there somewhere, and three sisters passed away. One sister at brith, another was 8 years old and we just lost the third a little over a year ago, she was 49. My husband and myself are raising her children, 10 and 15, (special needs children). Our children are raised and we have 6 Grande children. My half sisters adoption is in closed files in Ont. By the sounds of it, they are trying to get the files opened in Ont for all adopions, but only adoptions after the 1960? I have a need to know my half sister, but if she knew about me and she didn't want to go there, I would let it go, because of my love for her. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of files are lost, or there were a lot of bad adoptions before 1960s, why keep the files closed? Well thats it, I hope I didn't bore anyone, just needed to write my feelings out, we all have our own thoughts on this subject, its our right, thats what makes us all special in our own sort of way. Sheila

[EvaC]

We are in the process of adopting our 3 foster children. They were 6, 2, and 4 mo old when we got them. As the adoption draws closer, we decided to let our now 9 yr old daughter choose her own name. She picked out her own first name, added my middle name and it sounds beautiful! She is very happy with it. She didn't want the name that her ** gave her because she was abusive to her. We also renamed the baby because he was named after his bd. Our now 4 yr old son is happy with his name so we did not change it. You just have to do what is right for you.

[surfmama]

I just want to echo the idea to change your adopted kids' SS numbers. I have done this with all our adopted children, both for safety issues and to prevent their birth families from using those old numbers fraudulently. The new number will be linked to the old number at the SS office, but the birth family will not have any access or way to get to the new number. I personally have seen parents renting apts. and trying to use their children's SS numbers in order to apply for utilities, etc. and then skip out on paying the bills later. This could also apply to credit cards.

[jamie3]

We changed our son's name after we decided to adopt. We changed to order of his first and middle name because we liked the middle name better. We kept his birth name as his middle name though. We did this by calling him by both names in the beginning and then eventually dropped the first name. He adjusted very well with this process. Since he was 2 when we started this process, I really don't think he will remember being called the other name much. Even if he does, it is still his name, just in a different order.

Bottom line...he's my son now and as long as I don't upset him, I can call him whatever he and I feel comfortable with. For awhile, the other one wanted his name too, but we were comfortable with his birthname and didn't change it.

All kids go through a time when they want to change their name. Erica wanted to go by her middle name for a week once and Sarah wanted to use Sarah Beth for about 2 months. Then she hated that. I wouldn't hesitate to change the name but I would work into it. It worked for us!

[1of2moms]

If we are able to adopt our fson we will change the spelling of his name. His bmother could not (still can't) spell and his name is misspelled. Imagine seeing Joeseth, you would not know that mom ment it to be Joseph (not his name but the same problem). So we will standarize the spelling. Right now he says his name is D** J** C**(birth last name) S** (our last name). I think we will drop the C** if we can adopt him, but maybe we will leave it as a second middle name. We do not have issues of safety as some do. Bmom is/was just young, ignorant, and low functioning. I doubt she would have the where-with-all to try to find D. But she would try to use his SS# so the changing of it would be a very good idea.

[sweetpea_59]

Not all children were taking away from abusing Parents and also my spelling is not the greatest in the world. There are people out there that are very well off, and they are bad writters. Some parents years ago had the child taking away because they were to young, or for other reasons of their own. Some of these parents were under age and did not sign away their babies, either their parents did, or they were sucked in some how. There is a lot of stories out there. I heard of adopted parents abusing their new children they claim to be keeping safe from what? I know there is children in foster care being abused. What good is screening a family if this still happens. I know this because, I have a teen child with me right now, he was moved around now and then from home to home until he was 7. He was lifted up by his neck, beat with a wooden spoon and Sexally assalted and so on. Mind you, he did have a couple of good homes. I read stories on the internet of children that have been adopted out to familes who abused them all their childhood lives growing up. Then there were those that had the best adoption going, with very loving adopted parents. I am ashamed of myself for not paying attention to what was going on with my sisters boys, I always thought that the foster homes they were in, kept them safe. I thought that childern were put into one home and stayed there until they had grown. I also knew my sisters boys had FAS and other problems, which made me think they were better off were they were because they were getting the help they needed. Yes! I stayed away for years. Also, my sister didn't have her childern until she was in her late thirtys. Now my childern are grown up, and I am a mother again. It's when I found out my sister passed away, which I didn't know until 6 months after her passing, thats when I went looking for her boys. I didn't live in the same Province as my family, because I wanted to keep my own childern safe from certain famliy members. My husband and I did not plain to take the children away from the homes they were in, we just wanted to be able to see them now and then, so they knew we were here for them. We went to see the boys and they were not in the same homes together and they never seen each other much. Both foster mothers had the boys for about 7 years. They both told us that they were about to give up on foster care. One mother was single and just had a grandchild and she wanted to pay more attention to the grandchild, and also enjoy some of her life. And the other, she was 69 years old, And as I speak, she is in Mexico with her husband. Both women are welcomed in my home any day for all they did for those boys. And they do visit. I can't take that away from them. I will say both women were in their glory when we showed up. I was told by their case worker that, they didn't know anything about me, they never knew there was another sister. And they were really happy we came forward. Even some case workers are not inpressed with their system. We had to build another room in our home, in order to have the boys. We had them for 7 months now and they are really good boys, better behaved then normal childern without medical problems. We are adopting the boys. By the way the boys were up for adoption years ago and nobody wanted them because, they were not babies, and or they had FAS. I have learned a lot about the system, FAS and foster care in the last few months. I wish I knew sooner. I read a lot on other peoples problems and some are good and some are bad. Everybody thinks different. I also thought I knew it all, but I don't and never will. Oh! by the way, I also lived in one foster home for a few months as a child. I was treated very well. Adopting the boys for us, is to give them both the same last name and also for them to feel a belonging and loved dearly. They are 15 going on 10, and 10 going on five. (FAS)

[kamamsm]

16 mo old should be no problem at all- I changed our eight year old's name and had relatively minor problems.