“HEY DAD!”

Diers Klinik donor children

Funny stories about children

Every parent, regardless of whether you have a donor child, an adopted child or a child who has been conceived conventionally, can recount some funny stories about their children. Most definitely, all of us can recount various occasions where the children have made us parents a bit embarrassed or awkward. But that is only because children are so lovely and wonderfully straight forward.

It is no secret, however, that we as donor child parents sometimes find ourselves in situations which other parents perhaps cannot relate to. Fortunately, we can just laugh at most of these situations. And the children themselves also subsequently enjoy hearing about how they could at times make their parents a little embarrassed.

Some donor children have no father

We are two mothers in our family. Therefore, it has always been natural that our children have not had a father. He has never been asked for or needed, yet our children eventually found out that most kids actually have a father.

This became increasingly apparent for our eldest child when she reached the age at which she was starting preschool. While she would be picked up by either mum or mum, other kids would be picked up by either mum or dad. In this way, she met and saw a lot of nice grown men who were all called “dad” by the other kids. So,this seemed to be the most natural thing in the world.

The bright girl that she is, she took on board what she had heard. She similarly started calling roughly every grown man she met “dad”.

As you could probably imagine, this sweet thought and fantastic kids’ logic could cause a great deal of confusion among strangers. They had no idea who our daughter was or, for that matter, who we, her mothers, were. And maybe some of the men carefully thought through some of their nights out in the past, who knows.

“Hey Dad!”

If a sweet man in the queue, for instance, smiled at our daughter at the bakery, this smile might well be answered with “Hey Dad!”. This usually would leave the unaware man rather perplexed with a puzzled smile on his face. And we, her mothers, were also put in a rather awkward situation – having to explain that the girl does not, in fact, have a dad as she is a donor child.

Already, this could seem like a lot of information for a stranger to take in. Yet at the same time, we, as mothers, felt the need to make the situation even more convoluted by trying to convince the man that our daughter does not miss or cry out for a dad. This is true, but in the moment, it might have had the opposite effect. The more we tried to explain and talk our way out of it, the more embarrassing and awkward the situation became for everyone involved. Apart from our daughter who just continued smiling and calling the sweet grown man “dad”.

Little brother repeated the behaviour of his sister

These kinds of situations have given rise to a lot of funny and amusing stories. Over the years, we have gotten better at just shrugging it off when it has happened. We no longer felt the need to explain our family constellation to everybody present in the supermarket.

As the time passed, our daughter eventually grew out of it. Just like kids that age have various different phases they grow out of. And we actually forgot sometimes that it was even a thing.

However, when our youngest son was around the age of 2-3 years, we were suddenly thrown back into the same situation we stood in previously with our daughter. Our middle child skipped this funny phase in his early years. But our youngest son repeated his older sister’s enthusiastic greetings. And we were swiftly again dealing with strangers who was taken aback by these paternal greetings from a child they had never seen before.

Yet, the surprise was always hastily followed by a smile and a laugh from all of us, as kids are just kids.

Other rainbow families recounting the same story

And apparently, we are not the only ones to have been standing in this funny situation. We have heard from other families with two mothers who recount stories of children of the same age suddenly rushing to meet strange men with open arms, a bright smile on their face and a wonderfully warm and cordial “Hey Dad!”.

If you find yourselves in the same or a similar situation, my very best advice is without a doubt: Just smile at it as long as it lasts! And don’t worry, when they become teenagers, it will be your turn to make them embarrassed and awkward. It does not even require any planning – you just have to exist and be present, that will be more than enough. And if you then bring up a good story like the “Hey Dad!”-story, you are golden.

/Liza, founder of Diers Klinik