I hate the nickname MIL has given our baby
This may be on the slightly irrational side but it’s another thing in a long list of things that my MIL does that winds up both myself and my husband 🙃
Anyway, baby isn’t born yet but she’s already decided that she wants to call him/her Junior, regardless of what the name will be. She really likes nicknames and she often riles up the rest of the family to call her kids/grandkids by their nicknames too. So even if we tell her to stop calling the baby “Junior”, she’ll come up with another one. How do we deal?! It just annoys me that she can’t call the baby by their actual name!
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I would say ‘who is Junior?’
My mil tried to nickname my DAUGHTER Oscar. I shut that down. Now she calls her Mooshka or Mooshie. My daughter’s name is Bennett. She’ll also call her Beneisha Johnson. It’s the dumbest sh!t I’ve ever heard and she literally will not stop. I completely relate. I just am hoping that when my girlie is bigger I can teach her to tell MIL “that’s not my name”.
Friends of ours actually had this amazing and very subtle way of drilling it into people's minds that their child's name isn't anything but what they named him.
Let's say their son's name was Robert. If they were at an event or gathering and someone came up to say hi to them and their baby but used a name other than the child's given name they would repeat back the name before the person finished the sentence.
For example:
person 1: Oh hi there Bert! You're so cute!
Parents (before they could say "you're so cute!"): Robert!
Person 2: Hi Rob, I'm going to call you Rob...I love that nickname name
Parents(after each time they said 'rob'): Robert.... Robert...His name is Robert.
It worked like a charm and no one was offended because they did it in a way that was more cheerful and playful but you know they were being direct. If someone was taken back they would kindly say "We're teaching him his name so he knows his name when we call/play with him." I thought it was so brilliant! Who's going to fight you
When I say cheerful and playful they would mirror what they said after. So they would say "Robert! He is so cute!" Or "Robert! We love that name."
Idk I saw this and just really loved it. I mean at that point who's going to fight you on it? LOL.
Hey Nat, thanks for sharing it. It's brilliant 👏 👌
I had a similar experience but I was able to shut it down before my LO was born.
I am not a nickname person. They call my husband by a nickname name but I have always referred to my husband by his full name. I actually considered changing the names I really liked and coming up with names that were short so that they would feel a nickname wasn’t needed.
At some point it came up in conversation that I did not like nicknames and my in-laws decided to respect me and not call my daughter by anything other than her name (although there are a boatload of things they do that drive me crazy or disrespect me)
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