Mum will not call my son by his actual name

[Cheesybashful]

There more I think about this, the more it is getting to me.

Basically, I had my second child a few months ago, and my mum keeps calling him by other names instead of the one I chose for him. I'm not sure if she is doing it in a cutesy way (I'm not sure how it's cute, but I'm trying to understand her thinking), or is she trying to undermine the name I gave him on some level?

Is this something that happens? They are not cute pet names. They are just literal different names. Such as Johnny or Ellis?

Ask her. Only she knows why she does it.
My guess would be she does like the name you chose.
But you'll never know until you ask her!

She just says she likes the names she's calling him when I have asked. But we can't all just go around calling people different names because we prefer them.

Start calling her different names.

Start calling her Gertrude, Brenda, Sue…anything but her actual name or your version of Mum. Tell her that’s how bonkers she’s being.

This would annoy me too OP!
I think you need to put your foot down now. She's being very passive aggressive and it must be very upsetting for you.

Yeah it's weird. I'd mention it to her in front of other family. Hopefully others chiming in will make her see it's unreasonable.

I think pet names are lovely, like food words or animal words. If it's literally a different, but ordinary, name, that's totally out of order.

That's so weird!! Especially for a child who is still learning the name assigned to them. I would definitely bring it up in front of other family members, i can't see anyone siding with her as that's a very strange thing to do. I don't have the most spectacular MIL, but even she checked any nicknames with us as she knew we worked hard on deciding a name for our child

No, it’s not something that happens, it’s a bit weird of her. I suppose it’s possible she’s doing it in an attempt to undermine you (only you know if she’s like that) but unless she’s looking after your DC more than you are it’s hard to see how it would actually do that. She’ll just look batshit to everyone who hears her and DC will not be impressed once he’s old enough to understand his name. She’ll probably get bored if you ignore it (perhaps other than to correct her in front of others as you don’t want other people to start using the names she does).

If she’s likely to do that sort of thing once he can understand her, though, I would rethink her having any contact. People who play mind games with little kids are rarely good for those kids.

I’d tell her to stop. Cute nicknames yes, but other random names that she likes? I’d tell her she had her chance at naming babies and she needs to use the name you selected for your child

I'd guess she doesn't like the name you've picked and is just being passive aggressive about it by using other random names. I'd just keep correcting her and I'd be asking her is her memory going or something.

Cute names are okay - but using different random regular first names, is a bit to very strange.

Does she have a failing memory/dementia - so she uses any name rather than no name?

Using random names could be a first sign that her memory is playing-up and not functioning correctly.

Tell her enough is enough. I would loose my mind if a grandmother kept acting like this.
If she wants a relationship with her grandchild she calls him the name you have given. Nothing else.

Tell her to knock that nonsense on the head if she wants to continue seeing her grandson. Getting a person's name right is basic courtesy, even if that person is very young.

@Cheesybashful Id be very firm over this personally. It’s not his name.

My MIL did this 🙄 she (very strongly) suggested that there were certain names she likes for a boy/girl and that we should use them. DS was born and we didn’t use her suggested name so she decided just to call DS that anyway. Never infront of DH though - only ever when he was at work 🙄 But she’d never use his actual name infront of DH either - it was always “the baby” or “my grandson”. I corrected her every time she used a different name and eventually after her second or third visit I told her she was welcome to come back and visit once she learned her grandsons actual name and that if I heard her do it again she’d be asked to leave my house 🤷🏻‍♀️
My child has a perfectly normal name btw (within the top 30 or 40 UK names), I’ve not called him Beetroot or something ridiculous just to be clear 😂

I shouldn’t have been surprised though to be fair as she also went round telling everyone she could think of that I was pregnant and she was having a “gorgeous redheaded granddaughter” 🙄🙄 This is despite knowing that we had chosen not to find out the sex ahead of the birth. I kept having random people stop me for a chat like “oh, MIL told us you’re expecting a little girl - how wonderful” 🙄 Then was met with lots of confused looks when I explained that we didn’t actually know 🙄

That's pretty weird. I'm guessing there are other things she does which are similarly goading?

Tell her that’s irrelevant. He has a name and it’s X so please can she use it like a normal person.

I think you’re going to have to be quite blunt because that’s a weird thing to do. I imagine she’s hoping you’ll hear one of the names and say, “William? Oh, that’s nice! I think we’ll call him William instead of X” 🙄

Start calling her a random name? Hi Ella every time you see her. How bizarre.

She wouldn't be seeing my child if she was deliberately using the wrong name.

I'd also be asking other family members if they'd noticed anything odd about her. In a faux concerned way

• how does MIL seem to you these days? Only we're a bit concerned about her memory function - she seems to be unable to remember recent things but is ok with older stuff. She remembers our names but not our childrens

I wondered this.

I think you just have to call her out and say if she won't use his real name you will find it very rude and upsetting.

She's being annoying on purpose, that's not a small thing.

My dad did this for a while because he thought ds1 name was unnecessarily posh. I told him if he kept it up I guaranteed DS1 would grow up calling him Poppa.

he stopped.

"Mum, I'm getting a bit worried about how you've been forgetting Thomas' name. Might it be an early sign of dementia? Do you need help making a GP appointment?"

[apologies for the offence, those with dementia. My grandpa used to do this, around the time he was diagnosed with dementia - as he was a generation removed we were able to laugh it off!]

Call her Dave from now on. See how she likes it.

This but not as a joke. Her behaviour is so odd that I’d really consider memory issues as a possibility.

Yes this. But it may also be a control thing. I had a neighbour who tried that on me. He said he did not like my DS 1s name and would call him ‘Patrick’ instead. His real name is nothing like that. I put him firmly right on that and had the added bonus is that he has ignored us ever since. DS is now 15.

I think this is a bit of a thing, like my mum sometimes called my daughter Tilly or Flossie...neither are her name