While Stephen was alive Logan didn’t know a lot of words. But his first word was Dada. And man oh man did he ever know who Dada was. Dada was his person. He was so enamored by Stephen. Stephen would be killed before he ever moved to calling him daddy or dad. At three he still calls Stephen Dada. He still lights up when we pull out the Dada book. He still says goodnight to Dada every night. And loves his Dada blanket.
A while back Logan called Jonathan Daddy. My heart broke. I cried. Jonathan said he was so sorry. He hadnt told Logan to call him that. Logan had heard Jonathan’s kids call him that. And had started seeing Jonathan as a dad figure.
I’m not going to lie, it was super hard for me. The first while I corrected Logan. And would go in the other room to cry. Hearing Logan call someone who wasn’t Stephen daddy just hurt. Like being stabbed right through the heart. I wish I could say I got used to it faster. But I just didn’t. After a couple months I stopped correcting Logan. I told myself that I wasn’t being fair to him. I needed to deal with the pain without imposing it on my son.
After I stopped correcting Logan he quickly went to always calling Jonathan daddy. Then my mil heard it happen. Like me she cried. She loves Jonathan. But she felt like her son was being replaced. She talked to me more than once about it. Asking me to make it stop. I told her that I had tried to correct Logan. But that he saw the other kids calling Jonathan daddy and picked it up from them. And my correcting him hadn’t worked. I also explained that it wasn’t fair to Logan.
Jonathan and I are engaged and expecting a baby. There is no way it would be fair to have Logans three siblings calling Jonathan daddy while Logan wasn’t allowed to. It would have him stand out in a not so good way. I don’t want Logan to feel like he is the odd man out. Or that he is less loved than Jonathan’s children by blood. He will grow up with Jonathan as his dad. I should allow him to call Jonathan that.
Now hearing it doesn’t hurt me. I’m not sure how my mil feels about it anymore. I know for a while she was correcting him. But just like he didn’t stop with my correction he didn’t stop with hers. I feel bad about the idea that it might hurt people. I’ve more or less talked to people giving them a heads up. Or saying sorry when they hear it for the first time. One of my friends cried the first time she heard it. She found it very upsetting. I feel like those that don’t like it don’t understand how badly it really did hurt me. They think I don’t care. But the reality is that it did hurt. But I had to think of the well being of my child over my own pain when it came to this.
If Logan is going to grow up with Jonathan as his dad he needs to be allowed to call him that. It’s only fair.
?TWM
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