Over the years when a new child arrives at our house we usually give them a list of what they may call my husband and me. The choices include; mom and dad, Uncle Glen and Aunt Julie, Glen and Julia, Mr. and Mrs. Fuller, or grandpa and grandma and then we usually just let children call us whatever they feel comfortable with.

The four year old has called my husband, “Daddy,” since she came to live with us when she was twenty-one months old. Back then she even called me, “Mommy.” Well when she was returned home to her parents at thirty months old she transitioned to calling me, “Aunt JuJie,” but continued to call my husband “Daddy” whenever she came to visit. She returned to our care a couple of months ago and fell back into her routine of calling me “Aunt JuJie” and calling my husband, “Daddy.” Apparently during a weekly visit one of her parents must have set her straight on the whole name thing because she started referring to my husband as “Uncle Glen” for a couple of days. She must have reasoned it over in her mind for a while and decided it didn’t seem right because for a couple of weeks now she has consistently called him “Uncle Daddy.”

In the past we’ve had children start off calling us by our names and then after a few months make a transition to calling us Mom and Dad. Other children have waited until their parent’s rights were terminated and until they knew we were going to adopt them to make the switch. When one of our daughters was fifteen she decided she wanted us to adopt her, in Michigan a child over the age of fourteen has to sign a consent to be adopted, only she wanted to keep her last name and keep calling us Glen and Julia. We ended up telling her that if she wanted to be a part of our family permanently by having us adopt her then she needed to take our last name and call us Mom and Dad. She ended up agreeing with us and took our name and began calling us Mom and Dad. It was a little uncomfortable at first since she had called us by our names for the previous two years and during the first year of the two we all thought she would be returned home to her parents. She’s twenty-four now and we’re still her Mom and Dad and we’re also Grandma and Grandpa to her two daughters.
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Photo Credit Julia Fuller 2007