They said, “Mom, we want to be there, but we want you to tell him that we want to call him Dad, because every time that we’ve called him Dad, he always tells us not to call him that, to call him Bruce because we already have a dad. We don’t want him to say that to us anymore; we want him to want us to call him Dad.” I asked them how that made them feel when he’d said that to them. They said that it made them feel kind of very bad inside, and made them feel sort of embarrassed that they’d tried to call him that. They said that it also made them feel like maybe he didn’t want to be their dad. That’s when I realized that they were experiencing the deep pain of rejection, each time he was giving them that gentle reminder of their biological dad, and his rightful place. It was in that moment when I realized they had felt rejected each time he said that to them and that pained me deeply! I felt horrible, knowing how much Bruce loved them. He would have never, ever wanted them to feel anything but full acceptance and love from him.
And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them. Mark 10:16 NIV