For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for January 13, 2016

This is a good topic to handle in such a positive way! It could benefit a lot of younger readers.

My “stepfather” adopted me. So, technically, he isn’t my stepfather. It’s hard to know what to call him when discussing him with people unfamiliar with the situation.

When it comes to my father and stepmother, I at times get into the habit of saying “parents.”

My stepfather was a GREAT father. He cared about my sibling and I as if we were his biological children. I never had any problem calling him “Dad”. I miss him, as much as I miss my biological father. When asked about my parents, I always tell people I was lucky enough to have two Fathers.

It’s even more uncomfortable when you remarry a second time and the kids are young adults (20s) who don’t live under your roof. When we take vacation togethers, there are times I need to reference them to hotel staff. I don’t want to say, “My stepdaughter has a problem”. I don’t think it’s important for the staff to know she is my STEP daughter. We are traveling as a FAMILY, so I refer to her as my DAUGHTER. More uncomfortable for them, is being put in that situation and having to refer to me as their “mother”. Oh well….

Lynn’s Notes:

We went through the terms stepdad, and stepfather. In the end, Aaron called Rod, “Dad.” It worked for us.

Married over twenty-two years, my stepdaughter calls me by my first name. She was ten when I married her Mom and she still had a relationship with her Dad. Unfortunately for me, she felt that I had ruined her life by marrying her Mom. She made life very unsettling for over ten years, so there’s no real closeness between us. She was a very good child and has turned into a beautiful and successful young woman….all thanks to her Mom.

I have told my wife’s grown sons, their wives and the four children that they can call me anything the like – so long as it’s not late for dinner !The label doesn’t matter. It’s the love and acceptance that creates a family.

My stepdaughter was 14 when I married her Mom, her bio-dad was abusive and a drug addict. I wanted to adopt her as soon as possible, but I could not afford to, so we had her last name legally changed to mine. She has always loved me & thinks of me as Dad.

You have to think about how you’ll respond the first time they say, “You’re not my father!” I told my stepson, “That’s something you get to decide, but you still have to do as I told you.”

My Mom remarried when I was 4 and my brother 7. Brother fell right into the “Daddy” name but I was different. I called him Sweetheart, Hun, Baby….until he took me on his knee and told me that I had to settle on the name and these were my choices “Bob” or “Daddy”. I said “Daddy” jumped off his lap and went on about my business. And he is my Daddy in every way but biological.

Could be worse – I don’t even refer to my “stepdad” as my stepdad. He’s just my mother’s husband to me.

My mother married my uncle – we called him Uncle Step Dad…

I married a woman who was widowed and had three adolescent children. I never referred to them as stepchildren and they never called me anything but father. I did not adopt them because I felt they should keep their deceased father’s name. We had two more children and stepbrother and stepsister were not part of the vocabulary in our house hold. My youngest child is 48 and the oldest is 62. Everyone has always gotten along well as a family and has treated one another as natural born siblings. We have had a good life.

I know very few children who call step dad as dad. Most resent the man who mom replaced in her life. Same as woman as step mom not mom to the child. If real mom or dad has different life still has to be consulted to be main parent.

Not quite a stepfather, but Jean Valjean in Les Miserables comes to mind.

Or you can pretty much raise your grandchild. She came along at a very phycally painful time in my life(botched surgery #3) and I was ready for it to be over. Grandma and I realized that she needed a father(papa) figure and that was me. While mom has been around and went to school and made more of herself than I, teen age(shudder) granddaughter has 2 moms, a father/papa/grandpa, an uncle, aunt, cousins and is doing very well.

Michael is wearing a RUG!

Yeah, yeah. Enough about yourself, Lawrence. Lets talk about Mike’s alopecia!

I’m not sure this narrative ends well.

As mature adults, neither my brother nor I ever called our father’s second wife by anything but her given name when he remarried.

Too many replies to my comment to respond to each one, so…

I called him “dad”. My biological father died when I was three, and I believe he was out of the picture before that. Mom remarried when I was 5, and I was quickly adopted. Dad was a good husband, and a good father. He and mom are both gone now.

I just meant that it can be complicated when discussing my past with people unfamiliar with my family history. If I use a descriptive like “adoptive”, it sounds like I make that distinction all the time. Like I’ve not really accepted him as my dad. If I don’t use a descriptive, then things can get confusing. And where does that leave “biological dad”? I never knew him, and I suspect he was not a really good person, but I won’t dishonor him.

A great song by the Winstons was “Color Him Father”, where the narrator is a kid who admires his stepfather, who married a war widow and loves them as his own natural children. Here is the link if you want to hear it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEIiXVlKjZc

When I married my wife 20 years ago, I became stepfather to a man who was already 21 years old. Not a big deal. His kids know me as Grandpa, although they’ve met their biological grandfather. (I have no idea what they call him, in case you’re wondering.)

I love when an adult comes into a child’s life, by marrying one of their parents, and then, through years of caring and proving herself, earns a parent title.

My parents and my friends’ parents generally stayed in unhappy marriages (or so they seemed to us), but my husband’s best friend married a woman with 3 and 5 year old daughters, and it was a few years till he became “Dad”, and when I first heard it, I may have snuck into the bathroom and cried.

Earning the title may be even more special than getting it biologically. They are 18 and 20 now, he is still “Dad”, and they love each other like family does.

“The dad he didn’t have to be” — song by Brad Paisley

Specifically, Lawrence will be taking several steps out of the house when his loving step dad kicks him out for being gay.