You call me mommy

When I was younger, I always wondered why my parents didn’t ever call one another by their first names.  For as far back as I can remember, my parents always called each other “Mommy” and “Daddy” or some version of that.  My mom sometimes called my dad his real name but that was really only when he was in trouble for something.  I don’t really ever remember my dad calling my mom her real name but like a handful of times before I was 12 or so.  I knew her name because other people called her that name, of course, but there was never a question that her name to us was “Mommy”.  

 

Once I got older I started to realize that calling her by her real name would elicit a quick response when I felt like she wasn’t listening.  I would use that name in public if I needed to get her attention.  You try to say “Hey Mom” in public and see how many people turn around!  But I still would have never thought about calling her by her first name without the fear the punishment.  I had some friends when I was in high school who called their parents by their first names and that always seemed so odd to me.  That was before I had learned the adult’s habit to be judgmental towards other’s parenting habits, so I didn’t think anything about the parent’s decision to let this happen, etc.  It just seemed odd because we did not do that in our household. 

Now that I have young children, I know why my parents always called themselves and each other “Mommy” and “Daddy”.  If you don’t want your children calling you by your first names then you have to train them to call you something.  I didn’t even realize how that happened and didn’t think about it before I had children at all.  Until one day when my daughter comes into my room and says “Sara – more milk please.” Uhh no ma’am.  It was from that moment on that I realized how much Isabella truly does listen and pick things up from what she hears every day.  Of course we don’t punish for things like that but we were really quick to clear up the air with “You call me ‘mommy’ and not ‘Sara’”.

 

Unfortunately I just didn’t even think ahead of time to realize that she wouldn’t inherently know that she was to call me mommy.  Luckily, now she rarely calls me ‘Sara’ and usually only does it if we have friends over who are saying my name regularly.  

 

Does your child call you by your first name or something different from the norm?