Children and Relationships

Posted by Leigh on September 7, 2008

We’ve been living with my parents for a while, while we wait to be able to move into our new home. My daughter hears me refer to my parents as mom and dad, but she doesn’t really understand it. She knows them only as Neenie and Poppy, her grandparents. She also spends a lot of time with my grandmother, her great-grandmother.

Lately she’s been asking me why I call my parents mom and dad, but she just can’t believe that they are my mom and dad. Apparently she thinks that “Tall People”, that’s what she calls adults, don’t have parents. Then it really blows her mind that Grammy Rinie (that’s what she calls my grandma) is actually Neenie’s mother. But Neenie is old, how can she have a mom? She asks me.

It just amuses me to no end, that she just can’t fathom the relationships of adults. Apparently anyone grown-up just hatched from an egg, at least in her mind. So I try to quiz her on it. I’ll ask her who her parents parents are and she gets that right, I’ll ask her who her brother’s parents are and she usually gets that one too, but sometimes gets confused because he’s actually her half-brother, as they have different fathers. But when I ask who who my parents are, she just looks at me like I’m crazy and tells me I’m too old to have parents.

Then I’ll try to explain it all again, and she still doesn’t believe me. I wonder if I should even mention that her two aunts are my sisters. That would probably confuse her even more.