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Does a child using words like mama/dada or mommy/daddy affect a child's emotional growth?

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Tap

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I was talking to a friend today and they said that if a person is a teenager, they should no longer use words like mommy/daddy, mama/dada or similar. They feel it keeps a person in a child's mindset and inhibits maturation. To this person, mom/dad and mother/father are ok, or a specific family nickname (ie my older daughter and son call me Mo). They feel that if a person doesn't naturally lose the words on their own that are common for young children, they should be told to stop using them.  That failing to correct this, is blocking a developmental milestone. 


What do you think? 

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MercyA

MercyA

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I'm almost 50 and I still call my daddy Daddy. 🙂 My mom did the same her whole life.

For whatever reason Mommy seems stranger to me. I know several homeschooled teens who continued to call their mom Mommy and it always made me a little uncomfortable (but that's my problem, not theirs). 

I think it's just a cultural thing, really. Your friend is making a mountain out of a molehill.

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Carrie12345

Carrie12345

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My mom is 70, and she and my aunts talk about Mommy and Daddy. Si did my father’s family. I’m 46 and my sisters and I talk about Mommy and Daddy.  
BUT, we call our mom Mom or Ma when we’re speaking to her. Same with her and my aunts; Mom or Ma and Dad when they spoke to them.

That’s IN the family. We’d say My mom or My dad to other people.

OUR kids don’t use mommy or daddy when talking about us to each other and it makes me sad.

Anyway, calling it developmental is weird, imo.

ETA: My kids DO call me Mommy when they’re feeling needy. But that’s different.

Edited by Carrie12345
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historically accurate

historically accurate

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I'm still often addressed as Mama by my 16-21 year olds, but Daddy has mostly morphed to Dad. When they talk about us, it's mom or dad. In my area, Mom and Dad is the common teen usage.

My mom and her sisters, 63-72 years old, still use Daddy to refer to their father. That's possibly because he died very young, and he was still Daddy at the time of his death.

I went to college in the southeast of the US; practically everyone referred to their parents as Mommy and Daddy, even when talking about them, not just addressing them.

I don't think it's a developmental thing; it can be regional or just a family thing. 

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Brittany1116

Brittany1116

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I do think there is a common, natural progression for most people.

I don't have any memory of calling my parents mommy/mama and daddy/dada, so I must have abbreviated to Mom and Dad early. My husband and his family also use Mom and Dad. I live in the South and know very few people who use those names for their parents. Of those I know who do, it's exclusively older women who use Daddy and men of all ages who use Mama. 

My kids still use Mama and Dada like they did as toddlers and it has struck me as unusual but we haven't asked them to change their speech. 

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Pawz4me

Pawz4me

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I agree with others that it's perfectly normal depending on your region or culture, and that very likely the person who said that is a bit of a nutter or perhaps just not well educated, well read or well traveled.

I'm 60 and still refer to my deceased parents as Mama and Daddy. Everyone I know my age refers to their parents that way. And yet we're all very mature, totally stable and reliable adults. 🙂 My adult sons call me Mommy. Again, they're very functional adults and really have both always been old souls as far as maturity level.

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Emba

Emba

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I’m in Texas, and many people refer to their parents as “Mama” and “Daddy” well into adulthood, including me. But it does seem to be changing. My younger siblings call our parents Mom and Dad more often, even to their faces, which feels unnatural to me.

I feel like a slight digestion/clarification is needed here: Mama and Daddy are like their proper noun names to me, so if I’m referring to them to someone else I might say “Mama says” if Mama could be replaced by her name, but if I’m using it like their common noun title, preceded by “my” I’ll use mom and dad - “my mom says”. And which I’d use depends on how well I know the person I’m talking to, because yes, I realize that some people think it’s weird for a 40+ year old woman to call her father  “Daddy”.
 

My kids call us Mom and Dad mostly now, even though my husband and I still refer to ourselves/each other as “Mama” and Daddy - like “go ask your Mama”. But I never call my husband Daddy in direct address, because that would be weird. He’s my kids’ daddy, not mine. And so I regularly have to make the same clarification  my mom had to make to me: “I was talking to Daddy the other day - my Daddy, not yours “.

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stephanier.1765

stephanier.1765

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My youngest went from calling me Mommy to older child calling me Mom to young adult calling me Mama. I have no idea why. LOL My other children don't do it.

I don't think not changing from Mommy or Daddy to Mom or Dad is a sign of immaturity though. I think it's a case of how much they love that parent. It makes them feel closer, maybe. I don't know... just a guess. I call my parents Mom and Dad.

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fraidycat

fraidycat

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Personally, I use all the forms + others, like mama bear and papa bear, so that must make me emotionally unstable- sometimes mature and sometimes not?

Me thinks Friend has too much time on their hands and needs to find a hobby, instead of making random ish up about how other people address their parents. 
 

 

 

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maize

maize

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I called my mom Mommy throughout my growing up and young adult years. I had 7 younger siblings, that probably played into the word staying in common usage. Eventually the younger kids stopped using Mommy much (because,  presumably,  it felt socially awkward-- as it did to me once I was older and especially once there weren't littles around) and since then we've all been a bit at a loss because-- that was her name and we never really adopted another.  These days if I'm addressing her with my kids or nieces and nephews around I just use Grandma, if it's in private I still sometimes use Mommy. I refer to her as mom at times but don't think I've ever addressed her as mom. Some of my siblings switched from Mommy to Mama.

My kids use Mommy, mom, and mother. 

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Jaybee

Jaybee

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I have called my parents Mama and Daddy all my life. My dad died when I was in my 50s. I'm in my 60s now and still call my mom Mama. From the time we were married, we lived long distances from our parents, so it had nothing to do with our maturity or dependence on them.

My kids have always called us Mom and Dad. I'm not sure why that instead of Mama and Daddy, because both dh and I used the latter with our parents.

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Mrs Tiggywinkle Again

Mrs Tiggywinkle Again

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My great grandmother called her parents mommy and daddy when she talked about them until the day that she died at 98. In fact her last words were, “I see you, Mommy.”

On the other hand, my mom, and moms of large families I knew growing up with large age spans between children, insisted that the older children keep calling them mommy.  My mom didn’t want the young kids and babies in our family calling her mom. It didn’t work, obviously, and I do think there was a level of infantilization.  There was also a level of fear in that homeschool group at the time about how exposed to teenager things the younger children in the family would be, so they tried to squash typical teenager behaviors like music preferences and friends.  I remember thinking that should have been something they considered before choosing to continue having kids over a 20 year span. Fortunately my mom only stayed in that homeschool group for about five minutes.

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wendyroo

wendyroo

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2 hours ago, Carrie12345 said:

ETA: My kids DO call me Mommy when they’re feeling needy. But that’s different.

My kids always call me Mom...except when the youngest three want something, then they will sometimes pull out a Mommy. It feels weird because they never really went through a stage of naturally calling me Mommy. They went straight from Mama to Mom. But they must think that Mommy is best for sucking up.

1 hour ago, Emba said:

My kids call us Mom and Dad mostly now, even though my husband and I still refer to ourselves/each other as “Mama” and Daddy - like “go ask your Mama”. But I never call my husband Daddy in direct address, because that would be weird. He’s my kids’ daddy, not mine. And so I regularly have to make the same clarification  my mom had to make to me: “I was talking to Daddy the other day - my Daddy, not yours “.

Whenever my kids are around, I refer to my parents as Nana and Papa, my kids' names for them. Both as a form of address: "Nana, would you like to come with us to the park?" and as a reference: "I don't think Papa has ever been to Mexico." But if my kids aren't around, then I revert back to Mom and Dad.

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Tap

Tap

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Thank you everyone! I completely agree with all of you!! When they told me this, I was so confused! But they were soooo very passionate about it.   I never cared what my kids call me, as long as they are respectful. DD16 calls me mama and this is where the conversation started. They feel like it is part of why they are immature. Dd16 is autistic and low IQ----to me, her mental age is a reflection of that! To them, changing what she calls me, is a step in a positive direction (it isn't the cure, just a step). They have told me this before and I just ignored it as a pet peeve of theirs. Due to the amount of passion they exhibited, thought I would ask here, to see if I was the one missing something. 

My older kids call me all kinds of things. MamaBean, MoDeMo, Ma, Mama, Mo etc. 

BTW. I used to live in the South, I definitely know people who use Mommy, Daddy their entire lives and shortening it to mom/dad would be considered rude.  LOL

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gardenmom5

gardenmom5

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12 hours ago, Tap said:

I was talking to a friend today and they said that if a person is a teenager, they should no longer use words like mommy/daddy, mama/dada or similar. They feel it keeps a person in a child's mindset and inhibits maturation. To this person, mom/dad and mother/father are ok, or a specific family nickname (ie my older daughter and son call me Mo). They feel that if a person doesn't naturally lose the words on their own that are common for young children, they should be told to stop using them.  That failing to correct this, is blocking a developmental milestone. 


What do you think? 

I think someone has issues. . . . . 

My grandmother referred to her mother as "mommy" until the day she died in her 80s.    

a child who feels secure in themself, and separate identity from their parent, will drop them on their own.  If they child doesn't feel separate - telling them to stop using them won't change their "not separate identity".

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Elizabeth86

Elizabeth86

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3 hours ago, sassenach said:

In my house it’s ma/mom/mama/madre and dad/pa/padre. Mommy and daddy faded out but it’s also not a cultural norm here. 
 

What I think is weird is requiring that your kids call you mother. 

Me too. Mother and Father Grandmother /father or even Grandma and Grandpa sound so formal. We are not formal.

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EKS

EKS

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Both of my kids continue to call us Mommy and Daddy (pronounced something like Mah-ee and Dah-ee), and I have no idea why.  We never encouraged it one way or the other.  Sometimes they call us Mommo and Daddo, but not always.

Whatever problems anyone has had with maturation I am quite sure have had nothing to do with how they address us.

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Meriwether

Meriwether

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My 20 year old will still call me Mommy. Sometimes perhaps when she wants to rest in the fact that she will always be my child and the comfort that brings. But also when she is feeling particularly affectionate or lighthearted. I'll refer to their father as Daddy in texts with all of my kids old enough for phones. 

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Innisfree

Innisfree

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3 hours ago, gardenmom5 said:

a child who feels secure in themself, and separate identity from their parent, will drop them on their own.  If they child doesn't feel separate - telling them to stop using them won't change their "not separate identity".

I don’t think it’s related to having a secure, separate identity. Among the people I know, continuing to use names like “Mama” and “Daddy” has no correlation with being secure in their own identity, or maturity in any sense. It really is cultural.

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Kassia

Kassia

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24 minutes ago, stephanier.1765 said:

 As long as he's happy to see me, he can call me whatever he wants

Exactly!  

I know adults who call their parents mommy and/or daddy.  They are usually very close with their parents, but there's no question that they are independent adults and don't have some kind of unhealthy attachment.  

 

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Pawz4me

Pawz4me

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In thinking about this more I've come up with two working theories of my own --

  • I think names are often largely on auto pilot. So lots of kids who started out with Mommy/Mama and Daddy just probably never thought about changing, or
  • Maybe the older kids and adults who still call their parents Mommy/Mama and Daddy are actually much more secure and mature than those who change to Mom and Dad, since the change can be driven by peer pressure/not wanting to seem babyish to friends. Perhaps the kids who don't change are secure and mature enough to not care about what others think
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Clemsondana

Clemsondana

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My mom always called her parents Mother and Daddy, and that's still what she calls them when talking about them.  They reflect the relative formality of their personalities, not my mom's maturity level.  My dad and his siblings always referred to their parents and Mama and Daddy.  I don't know that I ever said Mommy - it was Mama and then Mom, although it was Daddy and then Dad.  I agree with the poster above who said that these become their proper name.  Various relatives are forever stuck with the name that some baby could say.  My grandmother wanted to be called Grandmother, but all that the first grandkid could get out was Gran-Gran, so that's what she was for 40 years.  It did not in any way mean that a bunch of adults in their 30s were stuck in childhood.    We have many more since apparently my family is amused by what kids say and once you get tagged by a kid, it's for life.  🙂   Even as these adults reached the point that they were being taken care of, they were still called by these 'immature' names.  You'd hear somebody say 'I've got to run help GranGran with her car' or 'We've got to go help Mama because Daddy is up wandering around at night'.  

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