I am in a similar position. - Edit 1
Before modification by Seriana Sedai at 03/11/2009 07:21:32 AM
Backstory - My brother's son (five years old) is technically my sister-in-law's son from a previous marriage. However, vile ex-husband hasn't been a figure in the child's life since a few months after he was born, while my brother has been the "dad" since my nephew was one and a half. Ex-in law family have pretty much disowned the ex-husband and completely love my brother. My brother, his wife, and the kids vacation with the ex-in-laws, etc.
With the addition of my new niece, brother and sister-in-law are considering changing the son's name to better fit in with the family. They don't want to offend my nephew's biological grandparents, but they also don't want my nephew to feel too different by not having the same name as the rest of the family. Additionally, they don't feel that my nephew is emotionally ready for the "Whys" of a different last name.
So...
1) Have you ever been in a similar situation? Either as the parent, child, grandparent?
2) How, if at all, would having a different last name than your siblings affect you?
3) Would you feel offended if you were the biological grandparent in this type of situation?
There are ways to go around this, doing hyphenated names and whatnot.
With the addition of my new niece, brother and sister-in-law are considering changing the son's name to better fit in with the family. They don't want to offend my nephew's biological grandparents, but they also don't want my nephew to feel too different by not having the same name as the rest of the family. Additionally, they don't feel that my nephew is emotionally ready for the "Whys" of a different last name.
So...
1) Have you ever been in a similar situation? Either as the parent, child, grandparent?
2) How, if at all, would having a different last name than your siblings affect you?
3) Would you feel offended if you were the biological grandparent in this type of situation?
There are ways to go around this, doing hyphenated names and whatnot.
I had my son when I was 19. I didn't give him his dad's last name, he has my maiden name. When I got married two years ago and had my daughter there was definite discussion about changing his name with him. He was just short of nine when Alana was born and he and I had several talks about what he wanted to do. He finally decided he would like to keep his last name, he likes it, it is unique (and it is, I miss it when I fill out forms. It's one of my middle names now), and he's the last male in our family with that name and at the age of nine he was deeply concerned that the name would die off. He's so cute and so worried about things that he shouldn't even know about.
Having a different last name as his sister doesn't affect him, at least not yet. Some mean kids at school tried to tell him that Alana isn't his real sister because she's his half sister, but those kids adore each other and ultimately it doesn't matter to him.
My parents didn't care if he changed his name or not, so long as he was happy.
I guess the real differences are that he was old enough to choose and it was my name not his dad's. I hope things work out well for your family!