I hate the nickname my son’s classmates have adopted. How can I get them to stop?

[conuly]

I love my 7-year-old son’s name, “Andrew,” but I hate the nickname “Andy.” When we named him “Andrew” we agreed to only use the long version and never the nickname. Until this year everyone has called him “Andrew.”

We moved over the summer, and somehow he has become “Andy” in his new school! I’m not sure how it happened, but after participating in a recent classroom event, it’s clear everyone is calling him Andy (kids, teachers, other parents). It has even spilled over into Little League.

My son doesn’t care whether people call him Andrew or Andy. I spoke to him about correcting people when they call him the wrong name, and we’ve practiced what he should say, but he is not an assertive kid, and I doubt he is correcting people often.

I made an appointment with the teacher to discuss the situation. She apologized and said that she would call him Andrew and speak with the “specials” teachers to make sure that they call him Andrew as well. She said she would make one class announcement, but that otherwise she will not correct students for calling him Andy.

As you can imagine, this has been totally ineffective. All the kids are still calling him Andy. I made another appointment with the teacher, but she was not helpful. She said that Andrew never objects to being called Andy and sometimes even introduces himself as Andy (I don’t know whether or not this is true). To me, this is irrelevant. He is 7 years old, I am his mother, and I get to decide what people call him. She is not willing to correct the other students in the moment when they call him Andy. I would like to take this matter to the principal. My husband feels like I’m overreacting. He thinks we shouldn’t make it harder for him to adjust to a new group of kids. If we don’t get this under control now, he will be “Andy” for the rest of his life! Help!

—Not Andy’s Mom

Dear Not Andy’s Mom,

Honestly, there isn’t much a teacher can do (and certainly nothing a principal can do) if peers are calling him “Andy” and your son isn’t correcting them. For every time that a teacher might hear someone call your son “Andy,” there are a hundred or more moments in a day when the teacher will not hear it, or will hear it but fail to register the problem because of more pressing issues on her mind.

I understand that to you it may seem ridiculous that your son’s teacher refuses to correct students when they refer to him as Andy, but I think she is in a tough spot. If your son isn’t correcting his classmates, but she is, that sends very mixed messages to her students. Also, if your son is introducing himself as Andy, now the message is even more muddied.

I can’t even envision how, exactly, that would go: “I know that Andrew doesn’t mind being called Andy, and I know that he introduces himself as Andy, but his mother wants him to be called Andrew, so please do what she wants.”

Your real problem is that your son either likes the name Andy, or doesn’t find it as offensive as you do. The truth is that your son’s friends, classmates, teammates, and many other people in this world will continue to call him Andy until he decides that he wants to be called Andrew.

Rest assured, that if this day comes, he’ll be able to slowly move friends and classmates into the Andrew camp. This happens all the time to the Eddies, Sammys, and Willys of the world who eventually decide they’re Edward, Samantha, and Will. But until then, no amount of teacher intervention is going to correct this problem.

—Mr. Dicks

https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/10/hate-child-nickname-parenting-advice.html

Comments

[conuly]

To me, this is irrelevant. He is 7 years old, I am his mother, and I get to decide what people call him.

No, lady, you don't. He's seven. He gets approximately 1000% more say than you do, and if he's been introducing himself as Andy then I guess he's decided.

Also, I've spent several minutes looking for a Twain quote on this subject to no avail. Argh. Regardless, I can sum it up with "I have no idea why people embark on this futile quest to control what their kids friends call them - by the time the child is in school all day, you don't get to dictate it anymore and you need to get a grip." Hopefully that's the only way in which LW is controlling - this "OMG I CHOOSE MY CHILD'S NAME!!!" is a common affliction even among otherwise reasonable parents.

[fox]

Something something Anne of Avonlea something St. Clair “Jake” Donnell. Mom is not the boss of what other people call her kid, never was in the beginning, and never shall be, world without end, amen.

Also: Lady, did you take your husband’s name when you got married? Lots of people’s names are not in place for the rest of their lives.

A little decaf is what this letter writer needs, JFC.

[conuly]

IRL, C. S. Lewis famously called himself "Jack" from the time he started school, and I don't blame him. My uncle did much the same thing for much the same reason. Luckily his middle name starts with W and so people assume Bill is short for William, but no, he hates both his names.

[cereta]

My father's name was "William." People at work called him "Bill," but that was a very narrow slice of his life. His family called him "Buddy" because his father (also a "William") was "Bud." When he joined the Air Force, his friends called him "Buzz" as a shortening of his last name, and that's what my mom, neighbors, other kids' parents, etc, called him. He also changed his middle name somewhere along the line to his Confirmation name, which made his name the same as his father's. Because of that, his dog tags had him as a "Jr," but nowhere else did, and his death certificate has a different name than his birth certificate.

My family is funny about names ;).

[heavenscalyx]

My dad's first 2 names are Charles John, and he's the third in line with the names (well, the initials, since his father claimed Joseph was his middle name, and no one knows whether his grandfather even had a middle name). Since his father was Charles, he was nicknamed Jackie by his aunt, and it stuck until later childhood, when he was just Jack, but also occasionally Charlie. In college and the Air Force, he became Mac (we're Irish). In his old age, he now also answers to Charles, especially in medical establishments (though we had to tell his nurses in the cardiac ICU to call him Jack if they wanted a response).

Meanwhile, I had an uncle who was nicknamed Chick because his last name was Featherer. So, yeah, my family's funny too.

[cereta]

Heh. Yeah, that reminds me of my maternal grandmother's final years. Her name was "Bernice," pronounced, "BURR-niss" (what that side of the family did to names was obscene; Bernice had a sister named "Elenor," pronounced "ELL-nurr). When she went into assisted living, everyone on staff called her "bur-NEESE." I was the only person who seemed bothered by it.

[malkingrey]

C. S. Lewis famously called himself "Jack" from the time he started school, and I don't blame him.

Neither do I, and nor would my father have -- he was christened "Lauren", and started referring to himself as "Larry" as soon as he was out of the house.

(Which caused a great deal of bureaucratic back-and-forth many decades later, when it became necessary to establish that the "Larry" on every single piece of documentation thereafter was in fact the same person as the "Lauren" on his birth certificate. My own suspicion is that when he enlisted in WWII, he did so as "Larry", and all his subsequent documentation followed from that.)

For that matter, I was eight when I told my parents that I didn't want to be called by my nickname, and they respected that and didn't. All things considered, I lucked out in the parental department.

[ethelmay]

C.S. Lewis wasn't even in school. He was young enough, probably under three given his diction, to point to his chest and announce, "He is Jacksie." Then he stuck to it and refused to answer to anything else. It was gradually shortened to Jacks and then Jack.

[ellen_fremedon]

I came into the comments to make sure someone had mentioned St. Clair "Jake" Donnell; I should have known you'd be on it :D.