I called my dad" Jimbo" (first name James) from my teen years on. I felt I was too cool for “Daddy” any more and that was the only nickname he would accept. (He hit the roof the one time I tried “Old Man”) I was the only one who ever called him that and over the years it became our special little thing. But some of my friends found it odd; they would ask, “Is he your real father?”
But Mom was always"Mama" and sometimes “Mommy” if I was sad or upset.
My SO calls his parents by their first names, as does his brother. They were raised in the 80s and they’re still the only ones they know who do it. The parents insisted on it; something about breaking down the hierarchy between adults and children or whatever. No boundary issues–they are excellent parents–they were just crunchy granola types. Both boys turned out very well.
One interesting outcome is that SO now wants our (future) children to call us by our first names, since mom and dad would be too weird to him. I feel the opposite–I want to be called mom and dad. It’s not urgent that we work this out, but we both are unwilling to budge. Not the biggest parenting issue ever, but a definite annoyance.
:eek: ,I weirded out (it’s like saying the alphabet backwards) if I even refer to my parents by their names in the third person (As in “What room Jane Doe is in?”. My paternal grandfather however has always been called by his nickname (Grandma would use his real name if she was annoyed), except for my Dad who calls him “father”.
I call my mom JeanBean sometimes. It’s a childhood nickname of hers that I just love. JeanBean!
But the rest of the time it’s just “Mom.” Dad was always just Dad.
Two of my cousins call their parents by their first names. I don’t know how that came about, but I kind of like it and if I have kids I might have them do the same thing.
What are “boundary issues”?
My three-year-old calls both me and her dad by our first names (about half the time). I’m not sure why she started it, it kinda freaks me out a bit, and I don’t encourage it. On the other hand, I’ve never actually tried to forbid it. And at least she knows what our names are.
My brother used to call our parents by their first names when he was about 6 or 7 - he was copying the kids across the street. He seemed to give it up later, though (when we moved)
Our daughter started using her dad’s first name around age two or three. It didn’t bother us but other people inquired if he was her stepfather when they heard her. She reverted to calling him dad in a short amount of time with no pressure from us. Now she might use our first names in a crowd to get our attention, but that’s about it.
Because I hate formality and coached kid’s sports teams, I always encouraged everyone to call me by my first name. After all I call everyone by first name or “mate”. I didn’t care which form of address my kid’s chose but both ended up more comfortable with “Dad”.
Boundary issues are when people don’t respect the healthy social distance and norms that most people do. For example, when you are making small talk with a stranger at the bus stop and mention the bad weather, and the person goes into how they should have known their marriage was going to end in a painful, expensive, litigious divorce because the weather was bad on their wedding day. That person just crossed a social boundary. Another one mentioned on the Dope recently was asking to borrow a coworker’s chapstick. Most adults have a boundary about sharing personal hygiene items like that, pretty uncomfortable to cross it. In a parent/child relationship, it can mean that the roles are more peer to peer or the child winds up taking care of the parent.
Growing up with Korean parents, I find it a little unsettling when someone addresses his/her parents by their first names. In Korea we don’t address someone a year older by his/her first name, so that sort of familiarity really stands out. Just cultural differences, I suppose.
I’ve called both of my parents by their first names since I was old enough to remember doing so. I don’t think I’ve ever called them anything different. Same for my step-brothers incidentally, though we were raised seperately until we were in our early teens.
However my grandmothers were “nanny” and “grandma”, respectively ( my grandfathers both died before I could talk ).
As far as boundary issues go, there have been some with my mother, none really with my father. I’m not sure that one had any more to do with the practice than the other. All in all I think in terms of psycho-babble it’s a bit of a wash. I was an only child for my rather emotional mother - her occasional clinginess I think can just as easily derived from that.
I don’t think I’ve had a friend or acquaintance that hasn’t found it weird ;). Having been raised that way it seems perfectly normal to me - I’d find the idea of calling my parents something like “dad” or “mom” or any other variant strange and offputting.
A few years ago, Dad’s sister asked all her nephews to stop calling her Aunt and start calling her by firstname; she also wanted her children to start calling her by firstname. Her brothers nodded agreement. After looking at them like they’d turned blue and grown horns, we agreed to add the firstname of the aunt or uncle being adressed to “Aunt” or “Uncle” and absolutely refused to call our own parents by firstname (except when it’s something like “Mister Johnathan Smith-Lavalle Senior, I’m talking to you here!” when they’re not paying attention, you know, like parents do to their kids…).
My TíaMaite (said all together as if it was a single word) should not be mistaken with Tiamat. Tiamat is a wuss, compared with my Aunt 
But we’re a traditional family and not even my TíaMaite is allowed to bend Tradition.
Mom & Dad to my parents. Real first names if I need their attention in a crowd.
First names to the inlaws.
Reverse that for Mrs. Butler.
Aunts & Uncles are first name as well.
Parent’s friends are now just first name, but growing up were Mr. Malename or Miss. Femalename.
I call both of my parents by their first name. Since I’ve done it since I was old enough to talk, it’s never seemed the least bit odd to me. However, recently, for the first time, I met another family that did the same thing, and it really wierded me out. I don’t think it harmed my relationship with my parents, and it might have helped a lot. I’ve always been very close to both of them, and made it through adolescence with a minimum of the standard teenage drama. Still, if I ever have kids, I’m not sure if I’d do the same thing or not.
I never really thought about this before, but I never called my grandparents “grandma” or anything like that, either. I was very close to my maternal grandmother, and called her by her first name (her husband died years before I was born). On the other hand, my maternal grandparents, I also never called “grandma” or “grandpa,” but I’m also pretty sure I never called them by their first names, either. I think I spent the entire fifteen years we both shared on this Earth communicating with them entirely without the use of proper nouns. Well, we weren’t really close, so I guess it’s not that strange, but it’s still pretty strange.
No nicknames for my assorted aunts and uncles, either, except for one of my dad’s brothers, who’s always gone by “Lolo.”
I always called my father “Daddy” and stepmother “Mommy.” I think it may be a cultural thing, but “Mom” and “Dad” sound weird to this day. My actual mother, though, I call by her first name. I don’t really know why, we’ve always done it and she seems to prefer it.
After more than 3 years I STILL have no idea what to call my “in-laws” (not married, but I’m basically a part of their family by this point), though. I get out of it by never calling them anything - I just wait till they’re looking at me to speak. It’s pretty stupid, but everything I can think of to call them sounds weird.
My dad is one of those people that you just can’t not call him by his first name.
Mom is Mom, except “behind her back.”
Me and my brothers have always called our parents by their first names. I remember being embarassed about it at school, just for its oddity.
I think it came up as an issue in some book in English, and when I confessed that I used first names some kid piped up that he didn’t like the idea, as it diminished the parents status as such (or words to that effect). I disagreed; surely first names intimate a certain…er…intimacy, and friendship that use of the generic role titles does not.
Didn’t make everything into a hippy idyll though. My dad ran off with some Presbyterian witch half my life ago.
I had a similar converastion with someone who felt the practice would give the family unit an informal nature. A casual relaxed family atmosphere* sounds like a good thing to me, for the most part. Of course titles in a family or the lack of them, don’t tell you anything about the structure of that family.
*when something more rigid isn’t required.
Like Miller, I never call my grandparents anything either. It doesn’t matter much though as we don’t live in the same state. I also have a very close relationship with my parents, and could tell them just about anything. The first name thing didn’t have anything to do with it though.
Here I disagree. Friends, co-workers, casual acquaintances, and the receptionist at the doctor’s office all call your parents by their first names. That’s not intimacy. But only you and your siblings can call your parents Dad and Mom. That is something special — and intimate.