Realistic timeline for an orphan seeing guardians as parents

[yume_hanabi]

Hi all! I was hoping to get some opinions regarding a situation in my fic.

Basic context: Fantasy feudal-like setting. 3-4 y.o. kid's parents were brutally murdered before her eyes, and her parents' friend (uncle-like figure to her) fled with her to the wilderness. That's where the main characters find them, and after some plot development Uncle-Friend entrusts her to them, because he's in no position to take care of her. (At the point they find her, she's malnourished and sick, and Uncle-Friend realizes they're her best chance at survival.) Main characters didn't originally set out to adopt a random orphan, but, well, she's there, and they can't abandon a child in need, so they take her home and become her de facto guardians/foster parents.

My question is, how long would it take for her to start seeing them as parental figures and call them "daddy" (or equivalent)? I suppose every child is different, and it might be quicker for some than others, but I'm looking for some broad estimates, or at least a minimum number that wouldn't have readers think it's too soon.

Thanks in advance.

Comments

[conuly]

Not all that many people have personal experience in this area, and I bet that most people who do know that the timeline varies from "pretty quickly" to "never", even if the kid is a preschooler at the start. So you can probably go with whatever suits the story.

One thing that might affect this is whether or not the child's guardian presents themself as her parent in any way and also whether society generally considers that orphans, once adopted, are most often the children of their guardians or most often their wards.

[yume_hanabi]

That's true...

On the guardians' side, they wouldn't actively present themselves as her parents; like, they'd pretty quickly come to considering her their daughter once the day-to-day of caring for a child that young sets in, but they also wouldn't call themselves her parents. It's made a bit more complicated due to the fact they'll be passing her off as their (live-in) maid's sister they'll just "happen" to let live with them. Formally adopting her at this point of the story would cause too much scrutiny, so it'll only happen after the main plot (and thus the fic itself lol) is over. ig my main concern is whether to have her start calling them her dads before the fic is over, or leave that for the post time-skip sequel 😅

Thanks for your answer!

[azurelunatic]

At age 4-ish, what she's going to call them depends super heavily on what they tell her to call them. Below 5 or so, you give some version of the cover story, like: A bad guy killed your mom and dad so you went to hide in the wilderness with your uncle. But living there was so hard you didn't have enough to eat, and you got sick, and then your sister found you. Your sister lives with us, so now you are living with us too! You can call me ____ and you can call him _____. We can't talk about the bad guy unless it's just you and your sister and me and him, because we are still hiding from the bad guy!

Around age 6 or 7 you can start including a kid in the idea of cover stories.

It took me several months from when I moved in with a roommate to start considering her son as my nephew, since I was taking charge of a lot of day to day stuff and we considered ourselves found-family siblings.

If there are other kids present, she may take a cue from them on what to call the adults. Nobody ever told me to call Uncle Skippy that, but that's what my friend called him and so he has been forevermore.

[mucky]

3-4 years old having seen her parents brutally murdered in front of her, and then malnourished/neglected, is probably going to cause at least some kind of attachment trauma — I guess the severity would be up to you re: what's appropriate for the character. It also happens at the time in a child's life where they may forget it down the line due to infantile amnesia, thus retaining the trauma but not the exact memory of the thing that caused it. (Then again, it might have been so traumatic the child is able to remember.) I'm not sure how long your fic will go, but it might be worth remembering that piece (as well as how trauma fragments memories) if the child moves through different developmental stages.

In searching the internet, I haven't yet found adoptees whose parents were brutally murdered before their eyes answering the question (though never say never), but I did find two Reddit threads asking adoptees who were old enough to remember how long it took for them to feel like part of their adopted families, if that's helpful to you: yoink and yoink.

[yume_hanabi]

Thanks a lot for the links!

And yeah some sort of amnesia regarding the event (and the time spent on the run) is likely, as on top of what you said, this is a character who, in canon, has only vague memories of her life due to another traumatic event that happened one year before the start of the canon story (she's a pre-teen in canon). So trauma-related amnesia wouldn't be out of character, regardless of age. The fic is a pre-canon AU with divergences to some characters' backstories, and hers is part of that; basically a "what if she was adopted by loving people after her parents' deaths" (though that's not the main focus of the fic, more like a side plotline).

[melannen]

It's going to depend most heavily on what her guardians want her to do. A 4-year-old is old enough to understand "I know I'm not your daddy, but you have to call me daddy now so the mean people don't find out"; they're also old enough to understand "I'm not your daddy but I still love you, so call me Uncle Bob (or whatever)". It might take them a little while to get it down, and they might slip up now and then, but kids that age learn fast. On the other hand if the kid decides to be defiant of the carers, the answer could be "never" regardless of what they ask her to do.

As to when the kid sees them as "parental" figures, it's going to depend on a lot? To some extent, a kid that age sees all adults as "parental" figures, but some of them are close, trustworthy, loving parental figures and some aren't. This has a lot more to do with the kids' history with adults and how the adults treat the kid than whether they are genetically related, though - a kid can bond hard with a caring nanny while having no feelings in particular about their parents, if that's the only carer they can rely on.

If the kid made it to age 4 with a loving stable home, and has never had a primary carer who was abusive or neglectful, they might bond pretty hard pretty quickly, even with all the trauma in between. If they've had a carer in between who they couldn't trust, or have been passed around a lot, or don't have any experience of dependable adults who love them, it might take them a really long time. If the new adults treat her well but deliberately enforce distance between them, she'll probably pick up on that distance; if they don't, she'll pick up on that too. If she's got a generally loving and open personality, she'll likely go faster than someone who's naturally more surly and self-reliant.

"Attachment issues" have been a buzzword in child psychology for awhile, but as far as I can tell they tend to come down to "this child has learned the hard way that adults aren't dependable, and is understandably not interested in changing their mind." If you just think of the child as a person with their own personality and limited experiences who is completely dependent on these people, you will probably come out all right.

[yume_hanabi]

Thanks, that's really insightful :)

She'll go from cosy life with loving parents & uncle figure to harsh environment with still loving & protective uncle figure, to new life with inexperienced but well-meaning and caring new guardians. She's also a pretty friendly character in canon. So I suppose with this context it wouldn't be out of place for her to adapt quickly...

[melannen]

Yeah, if canonically all of her carers have been trustworthy (even if they didn't always have the resources they needed) and she's a pretty friendly open kid, probably bonding with the carers would go pretty fast - not necessarily cuddling and saying "daddy" on day one, but progressing pretty well; resilient young kids will trust you like a babysitter almost immediately and bounce back to treating you like they've had you forever in a few weeks/months if you live up to their trust.

At that point you're still dealing with trauma though, which she might not bounce back from as fast, and that is super complex (and in different ways in kids who were still learning how to be a person when it happened.) She might not respond to things, or even communicate, in predictable ways; she might have breakdowns or tantrums that don't make sense and can't be soothed; she might have memory and sleep and feeding and toileting problems; etc. Not necessarily all of them, it'll depend on the details and a lot of times it's a grab bag. If she's safe, well, and fed for the first time since it happened, a lot of trauma reaction stuff might show up for the first time in quick succession.

How well the new carers handle the trauma reactions is going to matter a lot, and if they handle it badly, especially early on, that could make that trust building really tough. Not even necessarily anything they could prevent - if she's got triggers they don't know about and trigger her repeatedly thinking they're helping, or if they act like she's deliberately ignoring things that she was incapable of retaining in memory, or whatever, they could lose a lot of trust before they even have a chance to realize! - little kids think their trusted grownups know literally everything, so she'll assume they know the details of all the trauma issues she's having even if they couldn't possibly. But if they've got experience with kids who have been through tough stuff and are willing to listen to her and let her be the kid she is instead of fitting some external idea of what a kid her age should be, that can probably be worked through to trust pretty quickly. And some really resilient kids just bounce right past the trauma, too, with little external signs except being sad or scared sometimes.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

The two key aspects are:

1) The personalities of the people involved, how tractive or standoffish they are. Some people are very prone to forming bonds and do so quickly, while others have high walls and take a long time if they attach at all.

2) Amount of bonding activities; chiefly how much energy both sides invest in creating a relationship, but sometimes these things just happen. The more people invest in a relationship the quicker it grows. It's a lot about just doing the roles. Someone putting in concerted effort could establish a solid foundation in a month or two, whereas people who aren't really trying might not feel particularly close after a year or more.

So look at the kinds of people your characters are, and the kinds of things they choose to do together. Bear in mind that a caring relationship doesn't have to be parental. Guardians often take more of an uncle/aunt role if that's more comfortable. If you want to establish that relationship, then show the characters doing the work -- eating meals together, doing chores or other projects, talking, brushing hair, etc. That shows the development so it won't be a surprise.

[(Anonymous)]

As a now-stepparent who came into my child's life when they were 4, I'd say it took about 6 months. However, in that time I was seeing them for a day a week. I wasn't presented to them as a new parent or even caregiver really, more of a playmate, but kids that age may think of any adult they're attached to as "mummy/daddy" because of their limited vocabulary and understanding of family relationships. In your situation I'd find it plausible if it was a lot quicker because they're sole caregivers 7 days a week. A month wouldn't strike me as odd. This is highly dependent on their young age though, so I'd find that shorter timeline unlikely if the characters were aged up even by a year or two. It's also worth knowing that the kid might go through a later phase of no longer using those words if/when they realise how those words are usually used, before potentially deciding they do fit after all. That's totally optional, just mentioning in case it's a useful beat for your story as it develops.