My husband was raised by his father and stepmother (who he actually considers his mom, and legally adopted him years ago). My husband has had very little contact with his biological mom in the 18 years we've been married, and I've only met her once. She's invited herself to stay with us for a week, and arrives tomorrow afternoon.
My question is: What do I have my kids (ages 7 & 10) call her? They already have a Grandma and Nana. My husband says to just have the kids call her Darlene, but we don't have the kids call any other adults by their first name (they call all of our friends Miss Kelly or Mr. Shelton). But he also thinks that's not appropriate for a family member. Any ideas?
Since she is still technically their grandmother, I would say some derivative of Grandma instead of 'grandma'. How about GiGi or Granny. G-ma or MiMi. Just a thought.
I vote for Ms. Darlene!
I would suggest just going with Grandma Darlene or Grandma D. We do this with my mother and MIL. We explain it to our 3 yr old as Mommy's Ma or Daddy's Ma but when either of them are around she just calls them Grandma. When we talk to her about them we also use their names after Grandma so she learns who's who. I would also just ask your daugthers what they would like to call her.
I like Mimi, it is often used in place of Grandma... or DeeDee... but Darlene is fine. you might consider asking Darlene what she wants to be called, but be willing to go with it, you might say something like, how would you like us to introduce you to the kids, suggesting that "grandma" and "Nana" are already taken.
best of luck
Maybe grandmother has her own idea of what she wants to be called. Discuss it with her. A suggestion - find out what Grandmother is in other languages. In German it is Oma.
This was on Google -
Afrikaans ouma
Albanian gjyshe
Basque amona
Belarusen babka
Bisaya (dialect of the Philippines) apohan nga babaye
Bulgarian баба (baba)
Cebuano apohang babae
Cheyenne (Native American) Neške'e
Croatian baba
Czech babicka
Danish bedstemoder
Dutch grootmoeder
Esperanto avino
Estonian vanaema
Finnish mummo
French grand-m re
Frisian (spoken in Germany and the Netherlands) beppe
Gaelic seanmhair
Galician (romance language similar to Portugues) avoa
German Oma
Greek gigia
Guarani (Spoken in Paraguay and in adjacent portions of Argentina,
Brazil, and Bolivia) jar i
Hawiian Kupuna wahine
Hungarian nagyanya
Ilongo (Philippine Dialect)lola
Indonesian nenek
I upiaQ (Eskimo Dialect)aanaga
Italian nonna
Kamilaroi/ Gamilaraay (Australian Aboriginal) bathii
Latin Avunculus
Latvian VECAMATE
Maltese nanna
Mapunzugun kuku
Maori kuia
Odawa (Canadian Indian) nookmis
Ojibwe (Canadian Indian) nookomis
Polish BABKA
Portuguese av
Romanian BUNICA
Sanskrit mAtRka
Slovak BABICKA
Slovenian stara mama
Spanish Abuela
Swahili bibi
Swedish FARMOR
Tagalog nuno
Tibetan a phyi
Turkish ANNEANNE
Ukranian babusia
Urdu dadi
Vietnamese danh từ
Wagiman (Australian Aboriginal language) ngal-ngabuju
Xhosa (Language spoken Southeastern South Africa) umakhulu
Yiddish BOBE
I'd go with first name. you could have them call her Miss. Darlene
I would ask her what she'd like to be called and take it from there. Your kids know the score. They're old enough and probably understand more than you realize. If she asks to be called Grandma or Nana, the kids may want to call her Grandma D or Nana D or something like that. I personally wouldn't make a big deal of it. Chances are, given her track record so far, she won't be in their lives a whole lot any way.
why not just grandma darlene? i called both my grandmas by their title and name (like you would aunt __ or uncle __ ).
having a richness of grandma's is a blessing, when I was a kid I had several and they were separated by either nicknames or last names. grandma roberts, domma, grandma girard or plain grandma is how we referred to some of them when diferentiating between them, but just grandma when speaking to them worked fine. They all knew who we were talking to.
Yes we had a plain grandma, because we had so many that we nicknamed her just plain ol grandma and it stuck.. Let your kids decide, they will anyway, what to call her.
Your situation is very similar to my husband's relationship with his mother. His dad and stepmom have always been involved and she has not. When she met my stepkids they were in elementary school and they called her Grandma "Jane". When my husband and I had kids we asked her what she wanted to be called and she picked Granny. She didn't meet our kids until they were 4. Good luck!
I disliked my un-involved former MIL. When she did decide to get involved with my kids, we just called her Grandma Shirley. I didn't think she deserved the noble title of Grandma, but the kids don't need all the drama behind the scenes.
I agree with your husband. Have the kids call her Darlene. Sometimes calling an adult by their first name is not a bad thing. I do agree with kids using proper titles normally but this is different. Goodluck!
We have adopted our children. In the cases where there is a biological grandmother keeping in touch, our adoption agency recommends simply calling her "BG" - kind of cute and short for "biological grandma". I don't know if this helps you or not. It hasn't really come up in our home yet, but I think it will in the future.
Just a thought... maybe they should decide what they will call her. Have they been told "who" she is to them???
