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.

YANBU, but nothing awful will happen if they do call you Mummy rather than Mamma. My best childhood friend was South African and although she gradually lost the accent, she still calls her mother 'mom' rather than 'mum'. Doesn't sound weird at all.

I wish I could train my kids to call me "Ma". I like the idea of being Ma.

I'm in Germany and DD calls me either Mummy or Mama. I always refer to myself as Mummy. It probably will end up that they call you Mamma more than mummy but if you want to be called Mummy then stick to your guns. Your DC won't get confused.

BTW, being bilingual makes it a lot easier when dealing with grandparents: we have an Oma and Opa and Grandma and Grandad. Much less stress than Grandad X and Grandad y imo.

I know someone who reprimanded her 5 year old for calling her "mum"

The child was told "you do NOT call me Mum, I am your MUMMY, and you are not old enough to call me Mum yet!"

PFBitis to me..

My DCs call me Mum, Mummy and Mama. We're Scottish. Can't see the prob of your DC calling you more than one name.

Both my DCs have about 10 petnames each in the family, it is the same difference.

I am Mummy or Mum and DH (North African) is Papa.

If I say to one of the children "ask your Dad" they will not start the sentence "Dad" because I have used it but instead use "Papa"

We are in the UK but DH speaks to the children in Arabic.

i am mamma and partner is pappa.... lived in sweden too when DD1 was younger.... at dagis they will use mamma and pappa... but chose whatever name you want. here in the uk, partner is still known as pappa but my name changes often.... not selfish at all!!

ps join mumsinsweden on fb... tis great for these types of questions....

I'm English, we live in England but my children call me mamma and mummy. We live in London so lots of friends call their mums mamma. So my children mix the two. I think you may find your little one will do the same.

We are Mummy and Babba in our house. DS knows what Daddy means and occasionally calls DH Daddy but that's not his 'name'. He doesn't get confused, please don't worry. He knows that Babba is DHLanguage for Daddy, he knows DH is Xnationality and he is 1/2 Xnationality too.

I called my mum 'Bub', 'mum', 'mummy', 'mother' and when I was small 'mummy' too.

Of course you can get your child to call you mummy. We live in the UK and I am mamma to my children, even though the eldest is 10.

Not at all sure why you can't be mummy anyway

It's one thing wanting your child to feel 'Swedish', but he/she will also be of English/British heritage and surely you're not going to deny him/her every aspect of her English heritage, so why would you deny him/her something that is so important to you?

I get where you're coming from, and I just wanted to say they could call you mummy if you wanted to.
My best friend is french, married to a turkish man, and their kids call them Maman and Babba. No confusion there! It works really well.

FWIW DS(8) calls DH "papa", something he picked up while on holiday in France and it has stuck ever since. It's slightly worse for us as we are neither of us French and it sometimes sounds pretentious :o
On the other hand, DS always introduces DH as "his dad" and has done for many years. It's quite sad that you think your DC will already have some sort of disadvantage by having one non-Swedish parent, is it really such a big deal these days? And if you want DC to call you mummy then do, you are still a person and your culture and identity still count, even if you make the decision to live in a different country :)

just teach them mummy, kids don't get too confused about things like that. My charge is 20months and calls her mum any one of many names she has for her, but she still knows who we're talking about when we say mummy.

By the time your child speaks, he/she will understand that they call you mummy and other people call their mummy figure mamma. Maybe when slightly older, they may ask why - and you'd say in England they say mummy, but here they say Mamma - they hardly even sound different.

Call yourself mummy and DH whatever he wants, your child will get it and have a completely swedish experience without those particular words...

Tbh it sounds like you're being a bit of a martyr to this issue. I don't think I've ever heard a bigger non-problem! (In the nicest possible way! )

No reason not to use Mummy.
My three all started out calling me Mummy, we are in California. Then once they got older and around others I noticed it changed to Mama, now it's Mum, Mom or Marm!! (in a whiney voice) Dd has taken to calling me Mother, in a very dramatic voice too

We are in Germany, although all English.

We´re still Mummy/Mum/Daddy/Dad to our teenagers.

They never felt the need to change it because non of their friend use the same.

Good luck with even trying to get your dcs to call you your choice of name! DD(4) has decided she's too big for "Mummy" so now it's "Mum" all the way.

I'm in Canada and DD will NEVER call me Mom . All joking aside, kids are clever and can call you one thing at home and another at school. I know I will get Mom-themed crap from school but DD will call me Mummy.

Thank you all!

It's made me feel better about choosing to call myself mummy. I think the word mummy has so many lovely connotations for me it would be a shame not to use the same word with my DC.

I fully intend to only speak English to the baby the exception would be the word mamma. my DP will speak English to me and he will speak Swedish to the baby, my Swedish accent is not ideal I don't want the baby picking it up!

If we lived in the uk I would want to encourage DC swedishness but Sweden (even stockholm) where we live isn't allways as excepting of non swedes as the uk is of non Brits. I have had Swedish people say horrid things to me like at least your child won't look like an immigrant (I left the room before I hit them) and that DC should have my partners Swedish last name so they are not disadvantaged when applying for jobs as an adult. This is the minority of people and by no means the norm but it still bothers me.

My ds lives in Turkey and has a Turkish wife.His dd has always called him Daddy although she refers to him as Baba when she talks about him.It has never been a problem and she is almost 13 now.

Hey,

I have the opposite. my partner is British, my kids (7 and 10) are too, we are in England.

They do not speak my language (much), but they DO call us mama and papa!

They know this is different from what the other kids call their parents, but it is what we are. if they talk about us they will say "my mum, my dad says etc."

So you can be mummy!!!

When you are pregnant, little things like this seem really important. I promise you, they are not and will not be when the time comes that your precious child is starting to say words.

Your child will call you whatever you call yourself. I call myself mama, my 2 year old calls me mama. My dh calls himself daddy, and my ds calls him daddy.

I certainly wouldn't 'insist' on anything. Just call yourself mummy and see what happens.

DS1 has banned "mummy" with "mum" in preference. I'd be over the moon if DS2 could call me anything - he's non-verbal, so if he called me shitface, I'd be over the moon :o

"Mam" and "mammy" are prevalent round here, but I've never encourage the kids to call me that and the one who could doesn't.