Dear Divorced,

I'm mom of three. Kids don't get the adult inference of surnames. Their
name is their name. It wouldn't occur to a kid that a name "belongs" to
Dad, or that they could make a statement about rejecting someone by
dumping a surname. That's adult logic, not kid logic.

It wouldn't be a problem unless someone was making a big deal out of it
(i.e. YOU). Heck, we have class lists for our kids, and its pretty
common to have several surnames in one "family" and no one thinks
anything of it (i.e., blended families, kids being raised by grandma
etc. etc. ) I was well into my teens before it occured to me that my
mother was born with a different name, much less that she took someone
else's surname...much less that she might want to dump that name. I
just don't buy that a kid could be traumatised by their birth surname.

I could see it if the Dad was some notorious heinous creep with a
distinctive surname that made the kid a magnet for teasing. But just
because Dad is an immature jerk - nah, I can't see the purpose of
trying to deliberately shut him out of kiddo's life in any way. Dad is
making a mistake by not involving himself in his son's life, but take
the high road, and don't do anything to give him an excuse why he's
being such a schmuck. Leave the door wide open.

M