14 February 2008

Nicknames

Do you ever give your kids funny nicknames? I don't mean abbreviating their given names, as in the way we call our 5-year-old Alexander either Alex or Xander. I mean funny nicknames, silly ones. Nicknames meant to tease. Ones that are goofy or that are just plain weird.

We do this all the time at our house. Not in a mean way, of course, but as a way to lighten the mood sometimes. Or as a way to change the subject if the kids are getting grumpy. Sometimes we just pull our a silly nickname just because it sounds funny and we want to hear the kids laugh.

For example, Xander has been coughing a lot the last several days. Just a dry cough, nothing serious. So, we've been calling him "Sir Cough-A-Lot" and "Mr. McCough." See? Just silly names, and they are light-hearted and fun--they keep him from being so annoyed at having to take his cough medicine.

Another example is with Damien. He loves drinking pop, so he is constantly going around asking either me or Cle (my husband) if he can have a drink our of one of our cans or bottles of pop. So one day I told him that if he kept asking, I was going to have to change his name. He laughed, because he knew I had something goofy in mind. And he kept asking. So not too long later I told him that his new name was "Can I Have a Drink of Your Pop?" and for a few hours none of us called him "Damien"--we all called him by his new name.

Funny names like these help to pull the kids out of the grumps, too. Like if one of the kids gets up on the wrong side of the bed, I'll call him something like, "Grumpmaster" or "Mr. McGrumpy." Or, I might try to coax him out of his bad mood by saying that I bed he can't turn into "Sir Smile-A-Lot."

Our kids get into the act, too--they often pull out silly names for us, too...though theirs are often even goofier! They call us such things as "Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip-Cookie-Head" or "Mr. McMarshmallow-in-a-Box-With-Crayons."

It is all just harmless fun, and it keeps our family laughing. Why not give it a try with your kids?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have a zillion nicknames around here, some of which I'm not going to reveal because they would make no sense without the context surrounding them.

My oldest is "Roast Beef." I still don't know why his father calls him that.

My youngest is still "The Boo" at 16. Why? He was an unexpected "gift from God" so his name is Matthew which means just that. But in the womb, he was "Boo-Boo" and then Mattie-Boo and somehow . . . just "The Boo." :-) We're keeping him, though. Life would not be the same without "The Boo," even though he is an eating machine. :-)

Thanks for contributing this post to this week's Carnival of Family Life, hosted at Modern Sage -- Practical Living Blog. The Carnival will be live tomorrow, so please stop by and peruse all of the wonderful articles submitted this week!

Anonymous said...

I can't help but laugh at the McMarshmallows...We use nicknames too. In fact my brothers used to call me a crazy nickname. It used to drive me mad when I was a kid.w