Mom, Momma Crystal??? Who am I?

Altho my child is much older than what you will be placed with, I always refer to his biological mom, as his first mom or first mom D___. I am mom. Small kids don't usually do well with two names to refer to, (mom crystal, mom ----). If you want to differentiate by calling you momma and calling their biomom mom or first mom.. .that too will help. Good luck to you and your family!

At that age, I think you can go straight to mom, or mommy or whatever you ultimately want to be called. Think of this - if these children are to be yours forever, do you really want them calling you by your first name for the rest of their lives? You can choose some other special name for their birth mom - SHE can be "mama" or "mommy Debbie" or whatever. Whatever you are introduced as, I have a feeling that they will very soon follow the lead of your bio kids, anyway. I know plenty of foster parents who had NO INTENTION of a short-term placement calling them "mom" but found that it happened naturally (with the little ones, anyway)

Our firrst adoption, with E, who was 5 when we started the transition process, was a long transition. During the visits he called us by our first names. But as soon as he knew he was going to be coming to live with us he started calling us Mom and Dad, while still calling us by our first ames occassionally. Once he moved in, it was strictly Mom and Dad, by his choice. When we started visiting with our daughter she was 9 1/2. She asked if she could call dh Dad long before she started calling me Mom, but once she was moved in she was calling me Mom. With our 4 yr old foster daughter we were introduced by our first names. Due to the other children calling us Mom and Dad though, within the first weekend visit she was asking if she could call us Mom and Dad. I have never pushed the mom and dad thing, just introduced dh and I by our first names. As soon as they feel comfortable they naturally start calling us Mom and Dad, especially when there are other kids doing so.

Thanks everyone for the advice. They haven't mentioned us to the children yet as there was a concern that they wouldn't be coming home here. I think that I am going to go with "Momma Crystal" and then hopefully they will just drop the Crystal in their own time. It is going to be a bit confusing for them because I do in home childcare for 8 kids that call me Crystal so I think it is important to have them calling me Mom...in some form. I am sure with our older children calling us mom and dad it will help set the tone. Wish us luck today at 2:30 we are back in court and rumor has it that the other families homestudy wasn't approved. Hopefully we will be having these little guys call us mom or dad shortly.:cheer:

How did it go?

Previous court date the judge ruled that the Great Aunt needed to have a homestudy completed and we needed to file a Petition to Adopt. After this happens then they will decide where to place the children. Well yesterday in court we found out that the Great Aunts homestudy wasn't approved but no one had a paper copy of it yet because it didn't have the supervisors stamp of approval!! And that they were denying the agency to release it to anyone else. ARGH! So now we have to wait until that comes in. The relatives lawyer told the court it wasn't approved because of their finances, lack of a will and their home size. OK so prove it and let the county have it!! The judge now wants to see if that is the case and if those are the only reasons then he will still be comparing us to see where the children go. Ok so here is where I get to rant...what is the point of getting a homestudy completed if they are not going to take into consideration the recommendations of the agency? The judge did order the county to start making a transition plan to get the children into our home and we won't have to go back into court again because they are just going to have a telephone conference to decide where the children go. At the end of a very long couple of months we are hoping to have these kids come home soon.

Well, when we had the first visit we were Firstname, friend of the foster parents. They figured out the 3rd visit, when we brought them to our home that we were their new mommy and daddy, so we asked them to call us mommy firstname and daddy firstname. After they moved in with us, it took about 2 weeks for them to drop firstname, now we are just mommy and daddy. Though sometimes they'll be talking about mommy and we'll ask them to clarify which one. So we have mommy biomom's name and mommy fostermom name. I'd follow the flow on how they speak.

When we first met our out of state children (girl age 11 and boy age 13) we had our biokids with us. By the end of the weekend visit the girl was calling us Mom and Dad just like our biokids - even though we didn't ask them to (sign of her attachment issues too). The boy called us by our first names. During the 3 month wait for the ICAMA paperwork we were not allowed to tell them we were adopting them, but we called weekly. They referred to us by our first names. When they moved in we were instantly Mom and Dad. It gets confusing sometimes, but we refer to first mom as biomom or by her first name. Our daughter (she never knew her dad) gets a little thrill at calling biomom by her first name - I'm sure it feels naughty! Our son with RAD we occasionally have to clarify who he means ("Do you mean your biodad?"), but it's usually pretty obvious by context. The kids were separated in foster care because they were dumped in by biomom at different times. Our daughter's foster mom was actually the foster mom for her biomom! So the kids refer to her as Grandma "first name". Our son met his foster dad while in a group home so called him by his first name anyway. Marymom to biokids T(9) and K(almost 12), finalized on H(13) 3/08! Hoping to finalize on her brother D(almost 15) this summer.