Do you call your OH "dad"?

Granjura:

baubles Sorry I didn't mean to sound cross, I understand what you meant now.

Having always called my husband Papa our eldest daughter(about 5) came home from school one day and with a huge sigh said "I wish I had a Daddy. Everyone else in my class has a Daddy". Took a little while for her to believe they were the same thing!

My 3 children have each adopted different names for Father, so I now have to remember when talking to the grandchildren which one they use, Papa, Daddy or Baba (this last one is Middle Eastern). But all the Mothers are Mama when the children are very young and then they change to Mummy once they start school.

Hope everyone has a good Christmas full of joy and laughter.

ninathenana - I wasn't offended but I do sometimes feel the need to stick up for the north, especially given the fact we seem to be in decline economically

I agree that the habit of telling children for example to 'ask daddy', rather than ask fred (given name) is probably done to discourage children from using their parents first names. I don't mind when children do this with parents or grandparents but it does seem a shame to miss out on the opportunity to use a word like mummy/daddy/grannie, it confirms a very special relationship

I call DH Daddy if I'm talking to the cats about him SiL calls DD Mommy, but he's American. GS3 being half Hungarian calls DS Papa.

We don't call each other anything when talking to one another - I call him dad when referring to him to our sons and he's always been Papa to the GC. On cards I often put Charlie 2 - he's Charlie 1 - I've no idea where that came from but now I come to think about it he will sometimes shout Charlie when calling to me :-) I certainly wouldn't like it if he started calling me Mother or even Mum!!

We use each other's names and always did, even I. Front of the children, but in front of the grandchildren we are Bubba and Poppa. It started when they were babies to reinforce what they should call us. We could probably stop now but it might be hard to change.

I call him "hey you"! Seriously, we have the usual pet names for one another, which we normally use. MIL is like an older sister (he is almost 10 years younger than me) and has always been Anne, agreed on first meeting. He called my mum "mum". When my son was little, there were 3 generations on one side - greats, grands and mum & dad, so one was Grandmama and Grandpumpa, then Grandma and Grandpa and mum & dad. My difficulty is addressing envelopes and greetings cards to MIL - it is generally written as "Anne/Mum". On a slightly different tack, though, my parents were relatively old when I was born (my father 46) and I always really hated receiving letters from them addressed to "Mrs Patrick O'Connell" - that goodness that ghastly custom has died . . . I kept saying that my name was not Patrick, but they couldn't accept that argument. Did anyone else appreciate the suggestion that you were an adjunct to your spouse? Grrr - just the thought of it!!!

He is poa. It is a wierd name but now I call my ex poa cos that is the name my grandaughter calls him.

Weird?

I call my DH Grandad when the grandchildren are here, but that's it!

About, mum and dad, being a northern, or Scottish thing. This was done, when the children were growing up. When they heard the parents, addressing each other, by name. They naturally started using it too. In order to prevent this, they used mum and dad in front of the children. It became a habit, and they used it, when the children, weren't there, without thinking,

Never! He is my partner not my father. Although it may be a cultural difference, it is just not done where I come from.