How to handle step-father adoption - dissucssing with 3 y/o

[Anonymous]

I married my husband when DD was almost 2 y/o. She calls him Daddy and loves him SO Much.
I have never been involved with her birth father, but he knows she exists and has met her two times when she was 5 & 8 months. Now that my husband and I have been married a year he would like to go about officially adopting her.

Questions:
How do I talk to DD about how "Daddy" isn't really daddy???
Will I run into problems with the birth dad?

Note: Birth dad has never paid child support and I have never asked for it.
We are moving out of state next month.

[Anonymous]

move first before you rock the boat.

[Anonymous]

I can't speak too much to the legal stuff about having problems with the birth dad -- my guess is that he would certainly have to relinquish his parental rights -- but if your daughter is already calling her stepfather daddy, I don't think you need to have any big discussions with her quite yet.

Does she know that her stepfather is not her birth father?

My guess is that as she gets a little older, in the next year or two (particularly if the two of you have another child, she will have lots of questions about babies and when she was a baby, etc) information will start seeping out.

I have a similar situation (I'm the stepparent, but the "real" parent has the child half the time, too) and my stepchild is now almost six years old (I too came into his life when he was 2).

I would think of how you want to call the birth father and the stepfather. Maybe the birth father is "your first dad" or you can say it's called a "biological father" but the adoptive dad is "your daddy" or whatever. And I would just be honest and straightforward about it all when she asks questions about what she was like as a baby or things of that nature.

I guess what I'm saying is, there is no big discussion that needs to happen, it's too much for a young child to take anyway. Just let the truth come out in everyday discussion. Chances are, it won't mean much to your child at first, and she will continually have questions that grow more and more sophisticated as she gets older. For example, my stepchild now asks why we decided to get married, and why his parents "unmarried". We answer matter-of-factly and he accepts the answers and moves on to the next thing. It's not nearly as "serious" a discussion as I thought it would be.

Hope that helps. And congratulations on finding wha sounds like a wonderful man and father for your child.

[Anonymous]

We were exactly in your shoes a few years back. Now that my daughter is 9, it seems like ages ago. What I did was tell her that all families are different. I said that everybody is born with a birth mom and a real mom and a birth dad and a real dad. Sometimes you have the same birthmom/real mom, but you have a different birth dad than your real dad. Some kids had a birth mom that was different than their real mom and a birth dad that was different than their real dad. I told her that birth mom/dad meant the people who you get your genetics from, what you look like on the outside, and your real parents are who help you and take ccae of you. I started introducing the words birth father/genetics, etc to her at an early age because I wanted it to sound natural and familiar to her when she was old enough to realize it. I would tell her "I am your birth mom and your real mom and my grown up name is Selena, but you call me mommy. You have a birth dad and his name is Jon and you have your REAL dad and his name is Mike, but we call him Daddy. I also would explain how some kids have two dads, some have a dad and a grandma, some have two dads and two moms, etc. and that all families are different.

It is hard, because she will ask me why doesn't she look like Daddy, or why can't Daddy be her birth father and her real father, and I just tell her that God puts families together the way He wants them together. She is old enough to understand a little bit about genetics and for the most part, is okay with everything.

Good luck!