'Mummy'

[SalfordM7]

My step-child was sent this email today by her mother and I want to know if it is reasonable. To put it in context, we are a conservative family where calling parents by their first name is unthinkable and other adults are either known as 'Mr / Mrs' or 'Auntie / Uncle'. That is our lifestyle choice and should not be the focus of your response:

......you have still been calling your step-mother 'mummy'.

I have already dealt with your younger brother as I saw a chat he was having with his father, where he refers to her as 'mummy', which she is not, and will never be, and when you return home, I'll deal with you, because I was under the impression that you understood how wrong it is for you to call anyone else, but me, 'mummy'. So, we'll be chatting about this after school.

Ma
Mother
Mum
Mater

there was a thread on here recently from an op who was talking about marryone someone abroad off the back of one meeting and a few Skype conversations and people said she was going way too fast.

So how is it people don't seem to think it's an issue for children to be calling someone mummy they knew only from phone calls?

Just to clarify OP (since you thanked me) I think you may have misunderstood what I meant. The silliness is not on this thread, it's in your situation. You are more concerned with how you appear in your 'community' than what is right or appropriate for your DH's dcs. You are not their mummy and shouldn't be encouraging them to call you that.

You're not their mummy so you shouldn't have let them call you that. Whether or not their mother is kind to them is a separate issue. I am guessing that you are from a Muslim community as I have come across this twice before as a teacher and both times the step mum was a Muslim. Maybe it is a cultural thing?

Dino there have been a couple of references suggesting Real Mummy mightn't have English as her first language. I asked whether this was the case earlier, but no response from OP. Might explain the tone/turn of phrase.

OK.

All bonkers aside, there is only one solution.

You have to arrange to have a cup of tea or something with the birth mother and possibly the DC and all agree together an appropriate moniker.

Whether that ends up being 'Auntie' "MummySalford' - whatever.

It's not fair on the children and whilst I agree with the birth mother in principle, the tone of her email was not nice. Take the pressure off the children and agree something you can all live with. End of.

TSSDNCOP I've read further back about the calling her mummy on the phone before they met thing, which puts a bit of a different spin on it for me. It all sounds very odd, from all sides.

However, I once knew a little girl who was taken into care (thank goodness), and who very swiftly refused to call her foster carer anything but "mum", despite having been introduced to her as "firstname", and with the carer being very experienced and not encouraging it. The girl I knew was DESPERATE to have someone not flaky to call mum. (It's all worked out very well.) If the birth mother has a bit of a disrupted time of it, maybe it came from that?

OP - I suggest you find an alternative version of mummy - mama, or similar, that the children would be happy with and that fits with your values.

Or, get them to call you Stepmummy. As that is both accurate and incorporates the use of the word they have chosen.

As a matter of interest, how do your stepchildren and your own children refer to each other - as brother/sister, or as step-brother/step-sister? Just wondering how much they've chosen to integrate into your family.

I think it's quite possible that the father, the OP's DH, told his children that they were going to be getting "a new mummy" when he married the OP. And that they latched onto this and decided to call her mummy.

thing is, even if the children called the op mummy, there's no way they wouldn't be talking about their biological mother etc, esp at eleven the sd will have friends she talks to, it's not as if by calling the op mummy two divorces and step children suddenly became non existent.

The elephant is Babar, not Barbar. Irrelevant but true.

Sunny - then why not answer the OP when she asked what you meant by Stamford Hill - you simply referred her back to another post of yours saying 'some kind of old-fashioned closed community'. You could see from her name that she's not a Londoner, but presumably you expected her to know this.

I can see why you don't want to spit it out, it's a pretty unpleasant thing for you to say, but either say it or don't.

yes I thought she must come from some closed religious community like the one at Stamford Hill. ffs. as I said.

sigh.

still making the assumption that the OP and everyone else on this thread knows that there is an ultra-orthodox Jewish community there.

You still can't say it, can you? And you still don't get that not everyone knows about it - why the fuck should they?

I agree, Tam. Sunny, your 'Stamford Hill' comments have been insinuating and very presumptuous.

Yes, all very 'prepared to wound but afraid to strike'.

And actually, the identity of the community doesn't matter much.

it doesn't matter what community it is though, does it? I asked if op was Mormon or scientologist because from the sounds of it where she lives is bloody closed minded and oppressive. whether that be under the banner of islam or jewish or Christian or any other religion is irrelevant - anyone living in a culture of that level of oppression/expectation is living in a closed-minded world.

I wouldn't imagine these types of communities are that open to homosexuality either, would people feel it inappropriate to judge that as well?

that is kind of what I meant, a closed religious community, but I could only think of the one in Stamford HIll.
I meant no offence by this. Perhaps I should have said Plymouth Brethren or something else, because nobody would have been offended by that would they?

no, it doesn't (though as I know sod all about ultra-orthodox Judaism, I wouldn't presume to make that comment myself) - my point being that refusing to answer the OP's query about Stamford Hill was sneery, and that pointing the finger at a single religious community is pretty unpleasant.

I agree with what Tam says above. It was a seemingly deliberately casual comment with no context or explanation given.

oh ffs

if I found out my children were calling there step mum 'mummy' id be blooming angry too.
ur in the wrong here.

I actually lived in Stamford Hill, by the canal. My neighbour was an orthodox single mum, so yes, it does happen fwiw