How would you refer to your deceased parent when speaking to an adopted child?

Sorry for the confusing title…

This is something I’ve thought of idly a few times since my mom died. I don’t have kids, and newly age 40, the likelihood of me raising biological offspring is getting smaller. Adopting kids, or adopting step kids, I guess that’s possible, though.

My paternal grandmother died before I was born, but she was a blood relative, so it doesn’t seem odd to me that my father calls her “your grandmother” in stories he tells my brother and me about her. We never met her, but she was our grandmother.

And as for an example about adoption, a coworker adopted her stepdaughter as a toddler (the girl’s late bio-mom had been her best friend), and refers to her own mom as “your grandmother” when talking to the girl too, but that also makes sense because the child has known the older woman most if not all of her life and she’s her younger half-sister’s grandmother besides, so given their relationship adopted grandmother is a perfectly understandable label.

But if a kid is adopted and the parent’s parent died before the child joined the family, is the dead person really their grandparent? I mean, they have neither a biological connection to the kiddo nor a personal relationship with them.

If it was you, and you were telling the story, would you say “your grandmother/grandfather,” or default to “my mom/dad”?

What does it matter if the child is adopted? :confused:

My father died before any of my nephews were born. He’s their Grandpa Jaime, their dad’s dad, who died before they were born. That applies to all three of them. All three call their dads “dad”, too.

Well, if you’re trying to be inclusive, you would call them, “your grandparent”, because if you’re their ‘mother’, then your parent is their grandparent, dead or alive, now or later, it seems to me.

If you’re intending to be divisive then absolutely point out that they are ‘your’ parents, the silent implication being that they’re not the adopted child’s grandparent at all. Don’t worry, it won’t be too subtle, the adopted child will definitely catch the implication, I’m certain.

I have 3 kids, two from my loins, and an adopted daughter of a different ethnicity. The grandparents on both sides were the grandparents to all 3.

Zero distinction was made by either us or any of the four grandparents. Its down to one grandparent now, and not much longer, and she is a distraught on the coming change as anyone in the family.

:confused:

Why so hostile?

When you adopt all of your relatives become the adoptee’s relatives going back to the beginning of time.

Parent of both biological children and an adopted child agreeing with the consensus here that it is handled exactly the same way. My father died before one biological child was born and before we adopted our youngest (the bio named after my dad, his grandfather, the youngest named after my dad’s mom, her great-grandmother) … for each I’ve referred to him the same, sometimes having to clarify which grandfather the story is referencing of course.

It really is just automatic and it would feel very odd to do it in any other way.

You call them the grandparent, unless your goal is to make the child feel like he or she isn’t really part of the family.

Use any term you like, as long as the child knows who you are talking about. If the issue ever arises, just say “Yes, I know she wasn’t your REAL grandmother, but she was that to us.”

No, you don’t use the “R” word. You say “biological”.

**

I was very fortunate in that my (adoptive) parents, while very honest and upfront about my having been adopted, never expressed the slightest inkling of my position in the family being any different than if they’d given birth to me, which is as it should be, IMO. I was so used to hearing my mother say my eyes and hands “are just like grandma’s” that I would almost forget that I didn’t actually have her blood in my veins.

We’ve had many(!) parents come and go in our family, and we’ve got adopted and foster siblings. So MANY siblings…

My take: Either the child is of your family, or they aren’t. If you adopt, they get full emotional and legal rights to your family, as well as retaining any emotional and biological rights to the family that bore them.

We don’t distinguish by technical relationship in our family. A grandparent is a grandparent, however they arrived. My adopted brother just has more grandparents than I do (by a minor margin - SO many parents!). My foster sister - who may as well be my blood sister, for all the difference - shares my biological grand parents, even as she has her own - and I have hers.

So - Presuming I adopt a child - that child’s grandparents are that child’s grandparents - and my parents will be the child’s grandparents, too. The child would also gain a vast wealth of new uncles and aunts and cuosins and great-grands and so on…

We adopted the Firebug, and I default to “your grandfather” or “Grandpa Ed” who the Firebug doesn’t remember, since he died when the Firebug was 3.

The Firebug is family, no different from if he had my DNA. My parents are his grandparents, my long-deceased grandparents are his great-grandparents, etc.

So you would tell a child that you aren’t their “REAL” parent? :confused:

I have three adopted cousins. The only person who has ever made any distinction about their being adopted is my brother, who has a thing about being the tallest person in our extended family (and he’s not even six feet tall, so it’s silly to begin with). One of our adopted cousins is taller than him but my brother disqualifies him because he’s adopted. Which makes my brother both insecure and an asshole.

My grandparents were my adopted cousins’ grandparents. My great grandparents were their great grandparents, even though we only ever knew one of them. My great great grandparents were their great great grandparents. Nothing else makes sense. Would you say that grandma who was alive when the child was adopted is a grandparent but grandpa (grandma’s husband) who was long dead isn’t the adopted child’s grandparent?

Because the question was so insensitive. It suggested that adopted family members are of a lower status than biological ones. Among those of us who are part of adopted families, this is a very sore spot.

Assuming for a moment that your user name reflects your actual physical status (and isn’t a penis joke), how would you feel if someone asked you, “As a one-eyed person, what steps do you take to defer to complete people who have two eyes?”

.

I don’t think a question asked in earnest deserved the condescending tone of elbows’s reply.

And I’m not even sure the question was insensitive. This hypothetical kid is never going to meet the person in question and will never have had a relationship with her.

My daughter is adopted, and my dad had died before that. I refer to him as my dad or pop pop because that’s what all the other grandkids in the family called him. I’m not sure I understand the question.

Here’s the thing- it’s hard for me to answer because on the one hand neither “my mother” nor “your grandmother” is clearly right or wrong.* It’s the sort of thing that differs from family to family, based on customs or clarity or even the age of the children.* On the other hand, the question assumes that adoption makes a difference - and it doesn’t.

  • As I got older, my parents tended to use “my mother” for their own parents and “your grandmother” for the other parent’s so that if my mother said “your grandmother” , she meant my father’s mother.

Seriously. Thought this place was about reducing ignorance, not being offended by its existence. People who do not know but want to know and are asking? They should be celebrated.