I am a foster parent. My family and I have been a foster family since 1992. I know the foster parents you hear about on the news are creepy people who keep their foster kids locked up and feed them mustard sandwiches. You will just have to trust me, that is not us. There has been some debate in our family, but I am fairly confident that we have at this point in time had approximately 63 foster kids live with us.
It may seem trivial, but one of the many issues we deal with when a new kid comes to live with us is what do they call us. I actually have met several foster parents who feel strongly that the kids need to call them mom and dad. That always bothered me because even though we serve that physical role for some period of time, we are not mom and dad . The kids that live with us are either going to go back to live with their birth parents or are going to be adopted. That's when they need to refer to someone as mom and dad, so we have always had the foster kids call us by our given names. I am simply Wray to them. (it is pronounced just like Ray and I had nothing to to with the spelling)
Apparently there is a rule of etiquette that says when your first grandchild is born, you have to come up with a contrived, cutesy name for that child to use to refer to you. It seems rather silly and maybe even discriminatory that other kids are still free to call me Wray, but a child related to me by birth has to use a made up name, but I am told anything else is disrespectful.
There actually could be some interesting nuances to my particular situation. What happens if one of my children adopts a child? Is that child then required to use the made up grand parent name? I am not sure if this rule applies only to blood relations or to all kids that are legally related. In fact now that my birth children are adults, there could be a situation where I have a foster child that calls me Wray. That child is adopted by one of my birth children. Theoretically such a child might have to change the name he or she uses to refer to me.
What if my birth child becomes an unfit parent and has the aforementioned adopted child taken away and that same child now comes back to live with me thus becoming one of my foster children again? Does that child now have to change back to referring to me as Wray?
All perplexing questions, but I have delayed as long as I can. Lucy Kate Rives was born on Monday and I still don't have a grandfather name. I need your help. Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions for grandfather names. (No, asshole is not appropriate, besides my wife already uses that term to refer to me in specific situations.)
I realize I have had close to 9 months to work on this, but I procrastinate. It is going to be many months before Lucy actually starts to make intelligible sounds and even longer until she associates those sounds with people and objects, so take your time and give this some real thought. I am off to Walmart to buy more mustard.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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