Who's your daddy?

An odd situation at a former colleague's school, and the result of mixed-families and changing family definition. One of his students has four fathers. What is a school to do?

Jo was born to mom A and dad A who then separated. Jo stayed with mom A and new dad B, seeing dad A regularly, staying with him in a co-parenting set-up. Then dad A came out as gay and moved in with dad C. So for most of Jo's life, she had two familiar and reliable dads, then she had a third.

Recently, mom A broke up with dad B and began a relationship with dad D whom she has just married. Dad A is still around being the biological dad as is dad C being the partner of dad A, while dad B maintains contact since he had a dad relationship with Jo for most of her life and towards whom he feels father.

I don't know what Jo calls each of them. I doubt that it's A, B, C and D.

My colleague is at a non-public school so they have some freedom in what they do and how they do it. They have a program starting in G1, "How people live", which covers homes and houses, food, culture and families. This program already includes different family arrangements since they have : single by choice, single by divorce, single by death, marriage, re-marriage, split families, living with grandparents, gay parents, blended, long-term arrangements, recent arrangements inter alia. Now, they have four dads.

One of the central tenets the school stresses is to judge or accept an individual by what s/he does and says and not by his/her family background, housing or wealth. They also work on name-calling and bullying versus endearments and famiiarity. And they stress students should not compare themselves to someone else, but to set theit own goals and targets, and to gauge themselves against those and not against others and their goals.

One of the things I like most about this school is that they also work on suffering slings and arrows, the old "sticks and stones" approach. Basically, if someone says something to upset you and it does, then they have succeeded so instead of focussing on them and what they did and why they did it, you should be looking at you and why you are allowing them to affect you.

Children, and young children in particular, are curious and they ask questions. These questions can be insensitive, not intentional, but indelicate nonetheless. There is no way that Jo is not going to be asked about dads A - D and there is no way that the school can stop these questions. As a result, their program includes output, "how people live", and input, interacting with and reacting to others.

Jo by the way seems completely unfazed. Of course, time will tell, but she is in Middle School where emotions tend to rule and so far, so good.