To feel sad that my DC will never call me mummy.

[honeytea]

I am pregnant and maybe slightly over emotional due to hormones with DC1. I am English but live in Sweden with my DP (he is Swedish) we intend to stay here as it's just such a lovely place to bring up kids.

We are planning on speaking both English and Swedish at home and sending the child to a Swedish nursery/school, possibly sending them to an international school as they get older, but from the beginning we want DC to feel "Swedish" as that is where our home is. Me and my DP have talked about what the baby should call us, we decided it will be best to use the Swedish "mamma" and "pappa" the reason for this is that all the kids books/TV shows will have a "mamma" in, also their little friends and teachers will talk about mamma so it could be confusing for DC to have a mummy not a mamma.

I can see the logic in using mamma, I also think it is really sweet how they never get to old to say mamma, my 35 year old DP calls him mum mamma still. A little bit of me feels really sad about never being someones mummy (I know there are bigger issues in the world)

Do you think it would be selfish to the child to insist on them calling me mummy when they will already be unusual because they have an english parent.

No. I don't.

I think you should insist on 'Mummy' if that is what you want to be called.

You will find that no matter what you "insist" on, your child will call you what they want to call you. This could be that s/he calls you Mummy to you and Mamma to everyone else iyswim. Children are really good at things like that. I know someone who married an american, and they live in america, and her children speak to their father in his accent, and their mother in hers. She switches accent midsentence too, depending on who she's talking to.

I don't think it's selfish at all, nor do I think that it's going to damage your child in any way whatever. Think about all the names for grandparents that people use. Children aren't stupid. I think you need to speak to your DP about it, as it's irrelevent what we think.

My very DS1 calls me Mumma. I love it and my friends think it is really cute. He is nearly 8. I don't see enough of a difference between it, or Mamma TBH, to mean that i would miss Mummy.

Nothing wrong with starting off with 'mummy'.

But IME kids tend to slip into using whatever words their peers use. I know I switched from calling my mum "mommy" to "mummy" a whie after we moved to the UK.

Sorry that should read my very English DS1

My DD calls me Mumma too....

Congratulations! Your DC will use whatever word that you use with them, so if you want to be Mummy, you can be Mummy! I knew as family who had Spanish grandparents and glaswegian ones, so the children had Abuelo and Abuela as well as Granny and Granpa. That was normal for them so couldn't you be Mummy and Pappa?

You can refer to yourself as Mummy, so they learn that that is your name. I bet they'll start calling you Mamma by the time they start school though. Children are very very good at adapting their language according to who they are with. Dd learnt very swiftly to drop her "h"s and call me "Mum" when her schoolfriends were around!

What language will dc speak to you? Are you doing "daddy talks Swedish and mummy talks English" thing, or both speaking both, or what? It may be that dc calls you Mamma when speaking Swedish and Mummy when speaking English.

YANBU! I know plenty of people who grew up in England with one parent of another nationality and called that parent by the traditional name from the country they were from. I can sympathise with wanting to be called mummy - my in laws all say mommy and I have been careful to make sure my dc use mummy.

We're mAmma and pappa, and honestly, I love it!

But if you are unhappy, get them to call you mummy.

We're in UK, so all books etc, nursery say 'mummy and daddy', but my DC have understood from a very young age.
DS used to say 'pappa (that's my daddy)' to people at nursery, and tbh, lots have small children use their own words for M&P. I was 'mummmummm' for ages too...

I am insisting only daughter calling my mummy, we are in Italy and they use mama, but younger children can use mami, I speak to her i English and I am English, I don't like to be called mama.

We live in England and I am Mummy. Well until recently when the 4yo has stared calling me Mamma! Be a Mummy if you want - there are Swedish/English families living in London where they call the mother Mamma.

How is it selfish? It's a name.
Have your DC call you what you want to be called.

I live down south where 'mummy' is the norm but i'm from the north east and grew up calling my mother 'mammy'. my ds and dd call me mammy because that's how i refer to myself when i'm around them. the adults at their nursery call me ds and dd's mummy which is fine too.

they may switch to mummy as they get older, i'm not really bothered although i would prefer mammy because mummy just doesn't really mean anything to me!

If you truly want your children to be biingual, then you should only speak your mother tongue to them from day one. If you start speaking Swedish to the child in the home then that will just confuse things.

Bilingual children often take a little longer to speak fluently than other children and when they start they often mix the 2 languages up. If you don't consistently speak English to them, then their English will never be as strong as their Swedish.

Sorry -that's just a pet topic of mine from uni! But I do think that as part of that, if you want to be known as Mummy then you shd go for it. If that is what the child is brought up with, it will be fine regardless of what all the other Swedish kids are doing.

YANBU

My DCs really will never call me Mammy, as I would have liked. DH felt silly saying it (does sound silly in his Englush accent) so we ended up with Mommy/Mamaí.

There is no reason why your half-English Swedish child shouldn't call his/her mother Mummy.

You can easily use both names, it needn't be strictly one or the other

We have always used mummy but two of my dc also call me mama, they just switch between the two names

Congratulations and enjoy being both a mamma and a mummy

Not selfish at all. It's a very personal thing. Go with Mummy if that's what you want - they may have other ideas though! But ime immigrant kids call their mother one name at all and the general one outside.

I don't think it's confusing re books and tv, either. I'm Mammy, but Peppa Pig all her story books have Mummy. It's fine.

I think you should encourage them to call you Mummy and when they get to dagis/school they will prob switch to Mamma.

WHat they call you wont affect how Swedish they feel, there is a lot of English influence over there (plus all sorts of other nationalities) so they wont be seen as odd or different.

I have lived over there and am half Swedish btw, think my Swedish Mother was very happy with Mummy as its nicer than Mamma and Mor is too formal for young DCs. But if she hadnt been she would have encouraged us differently (we used Swedish terms for Aunts/Grandparents etc).

And actually gladders is right, speak ENglish to them and let your DP speak Swedish.
My mother didnt do this and I never learned Swedish properly.

We live in the North East of England and up here they say Mam. My kids call me Mum when they are talking to me, and call me Mam if they are talking about me to someone else.

Kids very quickly get used to these things. It will do your child no harm to call you mummy if that is what you want.

There is no reason why your half-English Swedish child shouldn't call his/her mother Mummy. My mum was Dutch. She had been in the UK for a long time by the time I was born and had no reason to speak Dutch at home, so I am certainly not bilingual, but my grandmother was always 'Oma'.

I don't see why it would be a problem to go with mummy. I have plenty of mixed ethnicity friends and they tend to go with their ethnic roots for this, so I have a friend from the Deep South USA who is Mama, a friend who is of Indian origin who is Ma and so on.