Q: My 9-year-old has started calling my husband “Dad.” Her father is furious and corrects her every time she does it. He says she already has a dad and allowing this is disrespectful. I understand why it hurts his feelings, but she's very close to her stepfather. This was her choice. What do I tell her?

A: There’s a fine line we walk navigating this bonus family life—and that’s the reason I developed the 10 Rules of Good Ex-Etiquette for Parents. All of the rules are based on real life situations—and this is no exception.

Rule No. 9 is "Respect each other’s turf." It’s understandable that dad feels calling someone else dad is disrespectful, but reminding the child every time she does it is about him, not her. There are other ways to guide her than to discipline her or make her choose. The more dad reacts, the more his daughter isn't simply deciding what feels comfortable; now she's being asked to demonstrate loyalty. His hurt has put her in the middle.

This doesn’t let mom off the hook, though. Many divorced parents do things because “that’s what my child wants.” I usually come back with, “If your child said they don’t want to clean their room would you say, OK?” Most likely not. You would guide him to clean his room. This is yet another opportunity to guide your child.

Children develop their own relationships with the important people in their lives. Sometimes the names they use evolve along with those relationships. A child who calls a bonus parent “Mom” or “Dad” isn't necessarily announcing, “Congratulations! You've been replaced.” They are saying: "I get that you care—and I care about you.”

However, this does not remove the sting of your beloved child being that familiar with someone else in a role that you cherish. In my own life when my bonus son called me "Mommy" right in front of his mother, she was horrified. To her credit, she said nothing while he was present, but she sure let me have it when he was gone—and she was right to say something. He was 4 and I was the primary caregiver. He saw it as a novelty. She saw it as the biggest insult in the world.

I was thrilled by his feeling so close to me that he wanted to call me "Mommy," but putting myself in his mother’s shoes (Ex-Etiquette for Parents Rule No. 7) I felt the sting firsthand and decided there must be another way. We sat down and figured out a nickname for just me—something special that only we used and that lasted well into adulthood. He now calls me Jann, but that’s how it evolved over the last 30 years, and that is fine.

It’s important to remember that children don't have a finite amount of love to distribute. Loving a bonus parent doesn't mean loving a biological parent less. You can’t have too many people who love your kids. That’s good ex etiquette.

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