My 24-year-old son’s girlfriend, after a few drinks at a family wedding, blurted out what others have only said behind our backs about how our four children address us as their parents.
“It’s weird that they call you Mommy and Daddy.”
The cousins, friends and significant others gathered around burst out laughing and quickly agreed with her. “It is!” I disagree. It’d be weird if they still needed me to dress them, tie their shoes or remind them to bathe. But calling me Mommy? It’s sweet, I love it and I am not encouraging them to change it.
My four kids are between 20 and 28 years old, one girl and three boys.The eldest, my daughter Emma, lives and works in Manhattan and is getting married soon. Jackson is 26, a professional ski patroller headed to medical school later this year.
Lance is 24, lives two blocks from his sister in New York and works in fintech. Luke, the baby, is six-foot-two and still growing, an electrical engineering student who reads books on philosophy. They are adulting in every important way, so who cares if they still call my husband and me Mommy and Daddy?
We wondered why our kids hadn’t made the switch to “Mom” and “Dad” from “Mommy” and “Daddy”
The first time I realized other kids had made a transition that mine hadn’t was about 15 years ago. I was in the parking lot at my daughter’s high school and she yelled to get my attention. “Mommy!,” she shouted. My friend Kate was nearby and she laughed and turned to me. “That’s so cute,” she said.
I didn’t know what she was talking about. “She still calls you Mommy!” Jackson, a few years later in his senior speech in high school, thanked us and noted that he was pretty sure he was the only one of his friends who still called his parents Mommy and Daddy. Everyone in the audience laughed.
We wondered why they hadn’t made the switch to Mom and Dad. I couldn’t remember consciously making the transition myself. My friends didn’t recall why or how it happened with their kids. My mom referred to her parents as Mother and Daddy her whole life, which
seemed a direct reflection on how close she felt to each of them.
Habits are hard to break, especially for nicknames
My kids speculated that perhaps, with an eight-year age difference between the oldest and youngest, they held onto the names longer for Luke’s sake. But Luke is grown up now, and in a few weeks will be old enough for the whole family to have a drink together. Still the cutesy monikers persist. Mommy and Daddy.
Habits are hard to break, especially for nicknames. My sister hasn’t been Jenny since high school, and even her husband calls her Jennifer. But she is Jenny to me and Aunt Jenny
to my kids.
Steve still calls Emma “Boo,” a name we gave her as a baby. Luke has been “Lukie” for years, and when his brother was visiting his fraternity house at UCLA and called him that, his friends had a field day with it. Lance was “Lancie” even as we cheered for him as a Division I college football player, and Jackson will always be “Jack-o-bear” to me and my husband, even if he becomes Dr. Jack-o-bear.
Honestly, I love that they call us Mommy and Daddy
The kids try not to say Mommy and Daddy in public because of the reactions they get. It feels weird to be called Mom, but I get it, I guess. When we are all together in the house, however, on vacations or at family functions, they revert back. Luke had a dozen college friends visiting last year, but forgot when he called out to me in the other room. He remembers “Mommy” coming out of his mouth and watching all his friends turn their heads and smile.
Lance tries most consistently, referring to us in texts with his siblings as “our mother” or “our father.” Even I find myself trying not to say “Daddy” when I tell them to ask their father a question.
But honestly, I love it. I think it reflects how close we are as a family, how much we care for each other. I didn’t grow up in a family that expressed emotions easily, and the ease with which my own children say “I love you” or call me “Mommy” seems better than the alternative.
The fact that they persist in using nicknames for us feels significant
We live in Marin County, California, where calling your parents by their first name would be more acceptable than our diminutives, so the fact that they persist in it feels significant. If you search online for psychological reasons for using childish terms for your parents, you’ll find reasons varying from failing to grow up to emotional regression. As with any internet doctoring or diagnosing, though, I can get reasons I prefer like that it shows deep affection, comfort and securely attached relationships.
I challenged one of the mocking family members at the wedding. Tori, a new mom to a gorgeous boy, is married to my nephew Max. She was laughing with everyone about how ridiculous it was to call us Mommy and Daddy at their ages.
“Well, at what age do you want your baby to stop calling you Mommy?” I asked her. “Oh,” she stopped laughing. “Never.”
Exactly.
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