Being called “mommy” creeps me out
Thursday, 20 October 2011 
22 Comments
A totally random photo
My little one has just started to call me “mommy”. He’s almost 3.
Puzzled?
The thing is that in our household I have always been “emme”* and J has always been “issi”** – the kids call us that even when they speak English to us.
So being “mommy” all of a sudden is really really weird to me. Even Oskar starts laughing every time Oliver says that, “Why does Oliver call you “mommy”???” he asks through his chuckling.
“I guess because he likes the sound of that word.”
And indeed he does. He now follows me around the house chanting “mommy, mommy, mommy” in a sort of almost whiney and definitely more babyish voice than his normal voice. It totally creeps me out :)
He also mumbles it at night in his sleep, over and over and over again…. and to J’s horror, he’s even mumbled “daddy” once :)
It is amazing how much comfort he seems to find in saying that word… and how much he also loves me singing “Hush little baby, don’t say a word… Mommy’s gonna buy you a mocking bird…”
He says he simply likes to say it and that others at the nursery say mommy. Fair enough. I’ll have to get over my weirdness and maybe one day even get used to being called mommy.
(Even though “mommy” it sounds so “serious” to me… even though it sounds like the step before being called “mother” and THAT feels like a step before me being a really old :( )
If your kids are bilingual – in what language do they call you mommy???
* Mommy in Estonian
** Daddy in Estonian. The boys, by the way, never call J “daddy”, even though they speak English to him, it’s always “issi”.
:D I know what you mean!
My kids…okay…my 2,5 y-o girl calls me “emme” and my husband “papà”. But just couple of weeks ago we had guests and one of the guests child kept whining and whining while saying “mamma” . The next day my kid woke up and said in the same moaning-whining-crying-meaowing way: “mamma tule” (mommy come). I said NO! No to the whining but not no to the “mamma”. But it felt really weird to be called “mamma” instead of “emme”.
Now I am “emme” again, like I used to be :) Even my husband calls me “emme” :)
A question: when one of you parents refers to the other…like “go to mommy” or “play with daddy” – how does J say? Go to “emme” or “go to mommy”?
In our household, my husband refers to me always as “emme” meanwhile, when I talk to my daughter in Estonian, I use daddy in both languages: “issi” and “papà” . She understands both but uses only the word “papà”
We are always emme and issi, so J would say to the kids “Go to emme”, etc. He doesn’t like to be called daddy, says it makes him feel old :)
Can we swap? BiP calls me MAMAN-g (the G on the end is the twang of the Provencal accent)
DH cracks up … he wanted to be called Papa and BiP adorably calls him Daddy. He is cool with it but every time I hear mamang I freak!
Mamang sounds very serious :|
My 18 months old used to call me emme since he was 9 months, but less then 2 weeks ago he suddenly started saying mamma(a) instead. I find it really strange as his pronunciation for this word sounds rather French than English, so I have no idea where he picked it. I really don’t like it as it sounds rather demanding to me.
I think “mommy” also sounds way more demanding and whiney than “emme”. Emme to me is just a nice playful word, any other word for mother just doesn’t fly with me :)
My children are fluent in danish and English. The call me mor (danish for mummy)and their Daddy they call Daddy as he speaks English to them. To me they call him far (Danish for daddy). They use the word that fits in what ever language they’re speaking. I love that:)
Sounds like your kids have figured this one out perfectly :) Would you freak though if they all of a sudden started calling you mommy??
She calls me Mama. She used to call me Mami, which is very close to the English Mummy, but she’s changed that just recently. Mama. Very funny to write it down and think that’s me I am talking about here. Eek ;-)
Just wait when she yells out MOTHER! one day :) (probably when she’s approaching double digits and you’ve cleaned her room and “been through her stuff” or something…)
My kids aren’t billingual (wish they were), but T is no 4.5 and just this past month started calling me “Mommy” and I’ve always been “Mama”. The “Mommy” freaks me out and I really don’t care for it. I asked her why she was calling me that, and she didn’t really have an explanation. I think it must coincide with her starting pre-school up again last month.
Well, we use ‘issi’ and ‘emme’. My husband, who is English also prefers issi and emme so there is no daddys or mommys in our household.
It was quite funny when my daughter was the only one in her ballet lessons who didn’t come to hug me when the teacher told the children in the end of the lesson to go and hug their MOMMYS (it happened every week at least for a year). She does know now that I’m also mommy and my husband daddy but she sometimes only uses it as a joke or maybe just after she has walked out of the nursery.
How long it will last, only time will tell.
My kids always called me Mama and my husband Papa, when we lived in Germany. Now we are in Switzerland we have more English speaking friends and they have taken to calling us Mum and Dad when their friends are around.
I guess a big part of it is fitting in. Children are quite conformists, I find, and don’t like to be seen as “different”.
It feels really weird though, to hear them say “Dad”. Perhaps because Mama/Mum is close in sound but Papa/Dad not.
J always freaks when Oskar’s talking to someone else and says “my dad…” :)
When ours was little she used to call daddy “ississ” ..
Now she calles me “mummy” and “emme”.. and daddy is “daddy”.
Doesn`t make any difference to me- both are nice.. mummy and emme.
I´m surprsed you spell mOmmy.. I thought it`s mUmmy in Australia as well as over here. Ot is it not?
I spell mOmmy because I lived in the US first :) and because mUmmy to me is a muffified Egyptian body :|
Apparently we speak American and Australian in our house. I personally cringe at my own American accent and creep away when I hear Americans speaking loudly in a shop. So I am quite happily “Mummy” and have never been (nor ever will) be called “Mommy”. Creeps me out too. But Darling No2 has started to call me “Mama” which makes me feel terribly old as I called my Australian grandparents “Mama and Papa”. I’m trying to view being called mamma as our little thing and pretend it’s sweet.
For a long time my eldest called me Mama because my husband is Mexican and refers to me as Mama. Somehow I did get her to call me Maman for a while and then she started calling me mommy and/or back to mama. I try to encourage her to call me Maman. My mother did this with me as well as a little girl and I don’t recall thinking it was traumatic or anything.
It will be interesting to see what #2 calls me.
Emme is beautiful and I’ve always loved the Danish words for Grandmother and Grandfather, especially how they differentiate which set of grandparents (mothers or fathers) MorMor or MorFar. I wish I could have persuaded my parents to adopt that but no luck. They are Yaya and Papou, which is funny as we have absolutely ZERO greek heritage.
My daughter (5) calls me ‘daddy’, my son (2) calls me ‘tata’ (in ML Polish). The funny thing is, that Maja’s best friend, who visits us a lot, calls me ‘daddy’ as well, though she is monolingual in Polish.
I am always “mami” and my husband is always “papi” he once called him “daddy” and my husband looked at me and said “did you teach him that?” Even though Little M speaks Spanish to me and English to my husband he prefers “papi” and says “daddy” just doesn’t sound right to him. And MY grandparents are German and I call them “Oma” and ‘Opa’ and anything else like “abuela” (grandmother in Spanish) just sounds weird.