Regardless, they are not your mom and dad. When I was growing up, the close friends of my parents were called Aunt Nancy and Uncle Amos but they were NOT related to us. Truth is, because both of my parents were adoptees – none of the grandparents or aunts and uncles were actually related to us. Such relationships are often referred to as fictive kin – a relationship that a child has with “an individual who is not related by birth, adoption, or marriage to a child, but who has an emotionally significant relationship with the child.” Still the situation in today’s story comes up repeatedly and can be difficult to handle delicately.

Here is the story – We’ve had our neighbors’ children placed with us on emergency action this week. We have been heavily involved with them for about two years and the children are often here for dinner/breakfast and life in between.

Out of nowhere today (day 5 with us), they’ve started calling us Mom and Dad. How do we gently push back and encourage them to use our names or something else, without hurting their already confused hearts ?

My 7 year old (who came to us from foster care) brought her friend to me and said so & so “wants to call you mom, you don’t care if she calls you mom, do you?” and my heart sank for her and her actual Mom. I said “Well, there’s lots of names you could call me! You could call me by my first name or add ‘Aunty’ to it. You could even come up with a silly name for me. Totally up to you.” Her reply was “no thanks, Mom.”