Kids calling you by your first name? Talk amongst yourselves.

David's in an interesting quandary:

I have 2 girls. 5 and 1, and their birthdays are both in November... so they'll be 6 and 2 this year. My 5 year-old is actually my step-daughter. She has always called me "Dave." I think you can see where I'm going with this. My youngest now refuses to call me "Daddy." She will only say "Dave" or "David."

I'm sure this is (hopefully) a phase. But, do you or your readers have any ideas as to what I can do in the meantime? I miss being called Daddy.

Do you have any advice for him?

Tags: Parenting, Toddler

Comments

[Stu Mark]

I'm a stepfather. While I would love to hear my kids call me any variant of Father, I make it a point to be respectful of their biological father, who is in the picture and does a great job. So they call him Dad and they call me Stu. Most of the time I don't think about it, as they are very respectful of me. Sometimes it makes me sad. But when that happens, I remind myself that it's the message that I need to pay attention to, not the address line.

And to those who don't dig being called by your first name (or whatever), make sure that you take the time to sit down with them and speak sincerely, addressing them respectfully and candidly. They call you by your first name out of a need for balance, for equality. Start the conversation off by acknowledging that and validating it. Then explain your feelings and then your preferences. You may find that their respect for you increases.

[kt]

I wouldn't worry too much about it - it's something all kids do, but you've got the stepdaughter thing that makes you think about it more. I called all of my aunts "Mommy" at one point or another, for varying periods of time. My daughter calls us Mama and Papa (interchangeably, yeah) when talking to us, but when talking about us, she refers to us by our first names.

The main thing is to not make a big deal about it - kids adore pushing buttons. And it would be hard to correct your younger without making the older feel bad, or at least weird.

[JRS]

I think you have to decide how you feel about it. I grew up calling my step-mother by her first name when addressing her directly (since I knew her by her name before I got to call her mom) and refered to her as "my mom" when talking with others. No big deal at all. And now I have a 4 year old who calls me "gra...ma...daddy" as he goes through all of his care-givers - makes me smile every time!

[Jill]

I suggest you talk to your older child, and explain the dilema you have concerning your 2yo as she's learning to talk. She may participate in correcting (gently) when your 2yo says something other than Daddy. You also might find that she wants to call you something else like "Daddy Dave".

My children have both tried out various names for me, (mommy, mom, etc) but I've reminded them that I am their mommy, but my name is "Mama" to them. I do it gently or silly, and they still call me different names to be silly, but I think I made my point. Being "Mama" is one of my only southern traits.

[oddharmonic]

My daughter went through a phase of calling me by my first name when she was 4, influenced by her teenage stepsister calling me by my first name.

We told her that her stepsister called her mother Mommy and her stepmother by her first name, just like she [my daughter] called her father Daddy and her stepfather by his first name. She quickly returned to calling me Mommy and she transitioned into calling her stepdad [Firstname]-Dad, then Daddy. She calls her father Daddy [Firstname].

My mother told me I went through a phase of addressing my parents by their first names around the same age with no blended family situation.

[Maureen]

I know it's not funny, but I had to laugh. I was worried about the same thing when I was pregnant with my first. But, it turns out that the kids are pretty able to figure it all out, especially because we're really clear to them about the fact that my stepdaughter has a different mom.

Just last week, though, out of nowhere, my 6yo said that he was going to call me by my 'real name' from now on. I said that was fine & that I thought I might call him 'Dad' from now on. :D He said he was serious & called me 'Maureen' once or twice that night, but by the next morning, it was back to 'Mom', again :D

I say just wait it out & see what happens.

[STL Mom]

Funny, my three-year-old son just started calling me by my first name, and I don't have any stepkids. My six-year-old daughter calls me Mommy or Mama. I sometimes make my son repeat his request using Mommy before I get him his milk or whatever. It probably doesn't help that my husband (still called Daddy, by the way) laughs hysterically when my son uses my name. A friend of mine told me it was very disrespectful for a child to use my first name, but I'm not sure I agree...

[joe]

reminds me of this anecdote:

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/001493.html

[emjaybee]

I think it will pass. It's easier to call you Mom or Dad, and over time, that's probably what they'll call you after they get tired of using your name. Especially if they're talking about you to someone else, and have to keep explaining that "Dave" is "Dad."

[Kathy]

My only child is much younger than this, but it occurs to me that if you (assuming your child is in no danger) only responded to "daddy" or "dad" with your two year old, she'd get the idea.

Maybe a gentler way to do it would be to delay your response when you're called for, just for a moment, to see if she reverts back to "daddy".

I think probably the only thing you don't want to do is make a big deal of it, as that would just invite power struggle.

Again, this is just based on reading parenting books. So you may want to consider all the other advice here from parents of older children a little more seriously than my theories.

[Gray Strickland]

My oldest daughter calls my wife "Smom" and her mother "Mom." Too bad that "Sdad" sounds like a European capital.

[Velma]

My 3 year old (who has a speech delay), just started calling me a shortened version of my (real) first name and laughing hysterically.

I said, "Who calls me that?" and he replied, "Daddy!"

I said, "OK, then what do I call Daddy?" and he said, "Babe!"

Apparently, I also call he and his sister "Honey" and "Sweet Pea."

[Cheryl]

Let it be. My kdis did this because it made them feel grown-up. Your youngest will return to calling you daddy in her own time.

[AJ]

Be sure Mom always calls you Daddy, even when adult friends are present. And at least initially, don't use pronouns. Don't say "I" or "me." Refer to yourself as "Daddy." Pronouns are a tough concept, especially for a 1-year-old.

For an almost 2-year-old, use books that show parent-baby animal families. The next step after a child begins using "mama" and "papa" is to understand their relationship to a child, that there are many mamas and papas in the world. Mother animals can usually be passed off as being fathers. We do own an animal book called "I Love My Daddy Because..."

http://www.thingamababy.com/baby/2006/04/book_review_i_l.html

One of my daughter's 2-year-old friends calls me Papa, but refers to my wife by her first name. At first I thought he was confused because his father and I both have beards. Then I realized his father's name is Daddy. The boy just sees my daughter and wife call me Papa so that became my first name, not a designation of the office i hold.

[Sandy]

My 2y2m son calls his dad by his first name. When this started 2 months ago, I thought Mark would be upset, but he was not. It came from everyone around us referring to dad by name but referring to me as his mommie. We are slowing correcting that by referring to dad as 'your dad'. Now, we just let him do it. Sometimes, when talking directly to him, he has started calling him 'Dad'. At 18 months, we did teach him to say our names as well as his own, because we did not want him to think our names were Daddy and Mommy - especially not if he ever got lost.

[Andrea]

My daughter did this for a while. I didn't pay any attention to it because it really doesn't matter to me if she calls me Mom or by my first name. But I guess the novelty wore off because a few weeks later I was back to being Mom.

[Ed]

Whenever my daughter calls me "Ed" (usually pronounced "Eeeed" like my stepfather), I try to convince her to call me "Homer". Because if we're gonna have fun with it, why not go for the Simpson's reference?

[LisaS]

As others have said, it's a phase as she'll get through it quickly. It happens to all of us, not just those with stepkids, so getting the 5 yo to call you Dad won't fix it. Grin and bear it.

The benefit of it is that your 2-year-old knows your real name, which could be useful if she gets lost. Go ahead and teach her your last name while she's at it.

[Nancy]

My 3 yr old has been know to yell "HON" when calling my husband (obviously what I call him), and he called him by his first name in the store the other day. We just tell him that he calls him Daddy and nothing else. Usually he's forgotten about it pretty quickly.

I didn't think even knew my first name but I asked him once and he did.

[Max]

This is a really interesting thread.

I'm 25 years old and have 3 sisters of a similar age. We've always called both of our parents by their first names. We used to get told off if we even tried to call them "mum" or "dad". They just didn't like it. Our friends and cousins were always told to call my parents by their real names.

It seems that people thought it was another aspect of my parents's "bohemian" attitudes. But that informality always made us a really close family that always pitch in to help each other. While I'm at it, here are the family rules:

a) Share and share alike
b) The same rules apply to everyone ("It's not one rule for one and one rule for another!")
c) Come when you're called
d) Do as you're told when you're told

c) might seem funny, but we lived in the middle of nowhere surrounded by woods, so my parents would always holler for us when they needed us.

[Jess]

I'm not a parent, but I live with two other families, one of which has one kid, and the other of which has two. The youngest, a three year old, has taken to calling every woman in the house "mommy" and sometimes calls his dad "uncle Eli" (which is what the other kids in the house call him).

For him, its a joke - he thinks its hilarious. We handle it by either going "what's my name?" or by jokingly calling him by another name, which always gets a laugh. If he wants something, but calls me mommy, I always say "what did you call me?" or "what's my name" and he'll call me Aunt Jess like he's supposed to - because he wants something.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, she'll figure it out. In the meantime, you can jokingly correct her or tease her about it, to remind her that you are really "daddy"