“It’s really weird”: Mum asks Reddit for advice about toddler’s language

When little kids finally get talking, they say hilarious and often brutally honest things.

Whenever that happened in my house, I always used to think, “I need to write that down!” Needless to say, I never got around to it and whatever funny words my daughter uttered were lost in the chaos of toddler land.

However, one mum found her daughter saying something particularly amusing (and a little bit hurtful) and has reached out on Reddit, just to check that it’s typical of a two-year-old.

Going back to work

The mum explains that she has now gone back to work, and that her own mum is helping with childcare.

“I went back to school this month, and with my schedule, I’m lucky to see my daughter for more than an hour on mon-thu. My mom watches her during the day, and she’s starting to call her mama even though it used to be  ‘gramma’….and now I’m ‘mother,'” she says.

Naturally, the mother is devastated and feeling somewhat replaced. “Does she hate me now??” she asks. “I’ll be like ‘give mommy a hug!’ And she’ll reply ‘no thank you mother, go away’ it’s really funny, not going to lie, but I feel like she’s roasting me and it’s killing me inside. Is she just being two?”

 

 

Just being a two-year-old

The post received a number of supportive comments all agreeing that her daughter was, in fact, doing what many two and even three-year-olds do.

“Standard 2 year old behavior, nothing at all to worry about,” said one reader. “Just sit back and enjoy the beautiful, hilarious, sometimes brutal honesty.”

Another mum shared her experience of this sort of brutal honesty.

“I was singing along with the Disney music my daughter loved, when she popped up with, ‘Mommy, what day is it?'” the mum said. To which she replied, “Today is Tuesday.” And her daughter came back with, “OK. … Mommy? Maybe you don’t sing my songs on Tuesdays.”

While it’s wonderful to hear out little ones grasping the power of spoken language, we also have to be prepared for what comes out of their mouths, even if it slightly breaks our heart.

 

“Your mother …”

One or two readers made the point that perhaps the child is saying ”mother” because the grandmother refers to the mum as “your mother” all day long. Children pick up things very quickly and get mixed up easily. My kids still mistakenly call me Dadda if they have spent the day with my husband and vice versa.

“It’s probably to do with grandma watching her all the time,” offers one reader. “Grandma probably refers to OP as ‘Your Mother’ in front of the grandchild, hence the kid starts calling her Mother.”

Another wrote, “I bet that when your mom talks to her about you, she probably is referring to you as ‘your mother.'” And another said, “Pretty sure her sentences begin with, ‘your mother is..’ all day long. It’s normal though lol.”

Maybe if the mum asks the grandmother to talk about her as ‘mama’ and refer only to herself as ‘gramma’, things might quickly go back to normal. While it’s understandable for the mum to feel a little hurt, it’s only what’s happening right now.

Next week there will be something else – but she will still always be her daughter’s “mama”.