Sandra Bullock wants people to stop saying ‘my adopted child’

She’s a movie star, but she’s also a mom—and she wants to be known as just a mom, not an “adoptive mom.” Actress Sandra Bullock says people should stop putting labels on families who grew through non-biological means, because a mom’s child is her child, no matter how their bond was formed.

In an interview with InStyle, Bullock says she’s tired of hearing people refer to her kids, Louis and Laila as “my adopted child[ren].” “Don’t say ‘my adopted child.’ No one calls their kid their ‘IVF child,’” she notes. “Let just say, ‘our children.’”

Slow clap for Bullock here. This fierce mama couldn’t be more right.

Related: I never understood my adoption until I became a mother

The actress is dropping some truth about the way language and labels can hurt when we’re talking about families, but this isn’t the first time she’s spoken out about her journey to motherhood.

She adopted Louis as a baby in 2010, and Laila was adopted at 3-and-a-half, after Bullock first fostered her. “I can tell you absolutely, the exact right children came to me at the exact right time,” she told People in 2015.

Related: Thomas Rhett & Lauren Atkins open up about adoption: ‘It is hard, but it’s so worth it’

Louis’ adoption famously happened in the midst Bullock’s painful divorce from Jesse James, and while Laila entered her life during less turbulent times, the process itself wasn’t without stress. “When you adopt a child, there’s a placement period, and if something goes sideways, they have the right to take the child away. It’s a tenuous, strenuous six months. We had an allergy scare that sent us to the ER, and we were followed by the paparazzi,” Bullock told InStyle.

Related: For new adoptive parents of 7 siblings, their first Christmas together is the true gift

The stress of that transition period is something that many parents in the midst of the adoption process can relate to (although most are shielding their children from the cameras of social-media happy friends and family, not paid paparazzi), and so are her comments about labels.

In the end, our kids are our kids. There’s no reason to add extra labels to it.

A version of this story was originally published May 7, 2018. It has been updated.

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