To not be 'Mummy'?

[Iamintwominds]

Dd is approaching one and there are some babbles of 'ma ma mama mama' which are cute.

Recently I have been thinking about this and I'm not altogether sure I want to be 'mummy.' I wondered if anyone else was known by their first name which is what I presume would replace Mummy?

I think it terribly sad to be a mum and then claim you don;t want to be known as their mum

I don't think anyone has said they don't want to be known as their mum, just that they don't want the child to call them the word mum. They will still be known as being XYZ's mum/mother. If someone said to the OP "are you childsname's mum" I doubt she'd reply "no, I am a person in my own right not a commonly used epithet and I'd thank you to remember that".

Having our DC's call us by our first name might not be the majority's choice but I don't think it's 'sad' for the child at all. A couple of DS1's friends call their parents by their first name and whilst I found it unusual (and a bit confusing initially) I didn't think "oh how terribly sad - will nobody think of the children".

jessie

I am probably guilty of that with my sister too!

Dear God, is this thread still running? Have people not finished shrilly accusing a pretty gracious, if rattled, OP of being a cold, unnatural mother, and making her innocuous preference for a different form of address responsible for other posters' personal traumas???

This is reminding me of the sickly sentimentality that regularly comes up on the 'only child' and 'not doing Santa' threads.

My name is HolyTerror. My son is an only child, calls me HolyTerror, and we don't do Santa as literally true. Shoot me.

Psycho, I didn't get to yell 'mum' either, as she died, but it was the dying that was sad, not the fact the word 'Mum' can never be used again. As in your case - the troubles with your mum are behind the sadness, not the name itself.

Exit I quite like Hubbard!

Fight ha ha ha! Absolutely!

Holy fantastic!

Dd may well be an only child too (can't afford another) - cripes. Mumsnet is going to hate me.

I think it all comes down to our own experiences. I had, until ten years ago when she passed away too young, my mum (often called Ma as I got older) and the name is all wound up with my love for her. So can't imagine using her name.

Dh however has always used PiL's first names. Works for them it seems.

Unfortunately having also had a lovely gran, grandma and grandad, I am struggling to accept my 'too cool, heaven forbid we be like other people' PiLs insistence that DCs call them Bill and Peggy (all names changed!!)

It is all about wanting my children to have a grandma - that special name that no one else can use.

Especially those teachers/ other professionals who insist on using it as a name not description to a child I.e. 'Is this mummy/ daddy/ grandma?' Or 'Let's ask grandpa' instead of YOUR mummy/ daddy etc. But I digress....

Bunbaker no it wasn't.

I've known a couple of families who had it both ways: there was a PapaJoseph and a MummyAnn, although Ann was the only Mummy they had.

Come to think of it, Ann's DD1 was sometimes addressed as DaughterHelen.

On the other hand, I had a boyfriend who called his mum "Scruffy" !

not read the full thread but oddly my son calls me Mama when he's speaking Dutch and Mummy when he speaks English. I've always said Mama to him. I think the languages themselves affect how the child speaks the 'mum' word.

a dearly beloved father/grandfatehr substitute was called by his first name as his wife had been widowed and her first children called him by name. It was odd for their later children to call him "daddy" when the first called him by name so they all used his first name. It worked fine for them.

Have you thought about using the word for mum in a different language? Like ammi (inthe east), or ommi (literally my mum) or ma mère or chénmò (Chinese)

DD calls me Mumma and calls DH Dadda.
DS calls me Mummy or Mum but DH is always Daddy.

I called my mother Mummy for years and now she is either Mum, Mother or her initials.
My father was Daddy and is now Pa, Pater, Dad or his name depending on where we are!

I think the names we call those we love are entirely down to us. I called my beloved Grandmother a variation of her first name for years without realising it was her name, I thought it was another word for Grandma like Nana, Nanny etc.

OP, YANBU to think about different names but I would be sad if your DD wantd to call you Mummy or some other name she had for you and you vetoed it. I have no idea where DD got Mumma from but it is her name for me and I love it. Soemtimes they call me Mummalito and I love that too because it is special, from them to me. If they called me by my first name I wouldn't mind if they did it with respect. Poo head I might object to mind!

I haven't read all the posts but could see from the first page this was going to get nasty- I'm not sure why people feel the need to be so horrible about other people's choices....Anyway, as kids me and my sister called our parents by their first names. They asked us to - their reasoning being that they were people too not just parents. We grew up in rural west wales and took a fair bit of stick for it (me more than my sis), mostly being asked if they were our real parents. There were a few occassions it bugged me but mainly it made me hate the judgey bastards, not begrudge my parents.

During a family holiday when I was about 8 we started calling them Mama and Papa/Pa and we still use those names, or variations of, along with their real names.

I now have my own lg who is 20mths and have fallen into calling myself mummy and her dad is daddy, which I'm not overly keen on and never thought I would do but it just kinda happened! Also DP doesn't want to be known by his first name to her. We also occasionally do the thing that I loathe which is referring to each other as mummy or daddy -yuk!
I'm trying to introduce mama more and refer to DP as daddybear to try and personalise it a bit.
I'm not sure what my point is but if you don't like mummy then you are wise to think of alternatives to introduce before talking really kicks in else you'll end up with it by mistake like me! Though to be fair I don't hate mummy - it's mum I really can't stand...it just conjours all sorts of horrible connotations for me including all those nasty brats that bullied me in primary school- arseholes! Plus just sounds really dowdy and fuddy duddy to me- I don't want to feep like the picture the word makes in my head when my daughter speaks to me. For those that love being called mum/mummy/whatever whoop for you but not everyone likes it and it's not denying a kid anything to want them to use a different word/your real name.

I have no problem at all with you calling yourself by your first name, my mum and dad started with their names and also I called my grandfather and step grandmother by their names (they thought it was simpler for a small child as my grandmother was dead)

whilst I still call my grandfather and step grandmother by their first names, Mum and Dad became mum and dad the first week of nursery - peer pressure wins

ps they also told me santa was a lovely story that some other people believed was true - no trauma there!

FWIW, my DS chooses to call me by my first name a lot of the time. It's fine by me - he obviously thinks of me as his mummy, so it doesn't matter what he actually calls me. I suppose if I'd felt strongly about it, I could have kept correcting him and made him call me mummy, but it doesn't really bother me one way or the other (and yes, I do like being his mummy, but what he calls me isn't really relevant to how he feels about it, iyswim)

I'm surprised that any mother wouldn't want to be addressed by the child as a variant of mother... why would you want to be called by your first name :o how peculiar....

Why is it 'peculiar' to just prefer to be addressed by your first name? .

I've explained over the course of the thread that I dislike the sound of mummy, I think ma is horrible, mother is ridiculously formal and while mum is the best of the bunch I'm not mad keen.

I certainly won't be requesting I am called mum in another language!

So my first name seems as good as any other.

I'm late to this thread but my DCs call me by my first name. Have done since they were about 7.

I like it. I've never had any comments in RL. No idea why some people are so shocked by the OP.

I was friends with someone in school who called her mum by her first name. It was weird, we all found it weird. It's strange and impersonal IMO, it's as if you're a stranger or maybe a friend rather than their mother.

Maybe another variant of mummy- Ma, mum, mam, mammy, mom, mother, mama, maman... There's quite a few. I'm keen on getting DC to call me Mother but it's not quite sticking and I'm still very much mummy...

Since this is an old thread, and I've said a few times now I don't want maman or similar (we are not French!) it may be better people don't waste their time posting, as I have decided to go with my first name for now.

If dd decides on mummy or mum as she gets older that's fine, I don't mind :)

I don't like daddy, I've asked DD to use Dad or FredFredGeorge, but I have failed to stop everyone else only using daddy when referring to me, it's quite annoying, but I can only negotiate with DD, I'm not going to dictate how anyone speaks.

So I can completely appreciate not wanting to be mum. Good luck and hope you succeed!

I have known a person who didn't want to be mum, mummy, mama or any other connotation. For some unknown reason she wished to be called by her first name, thought it made herself look cool, better than the many heifers named mother. Her only son grew up calling her and his dad by their first names. Even as a young adult, 'he' was always somewhat distant and wasn't close to either parent. Being his 'step mother' for twelve years, he always calls me by a pet name. I always got the cuddle. Children only get one mother. A rose by any other name, is still a rose. Why marr what should be a beautiful and safe time in a childs life ?

I called my parents by their first names and my children all use my name. I feel it's more intimate and that mummy is just a title or job description probably as I never used it myself. I think you should use what you like YANBU