How to Stop Using a Nickname

It's great that you're willing to buy in. When I was around 10 I told my parents they had to stop calling me Janie - I was only going to answer to J.. A week or two of that and Janie went out the window. If you don't mind, have him ignore you till you call him the right name - it'll happen (but I bet you'll be sad to let "goose" go.) Good luck.

my 3 year old (lord help me!!! haha!) decided she wants to be Abigail, not Abby. She does NOT like being called Abby and gets mad if you do! I just try as hard as I can to make a conscious effort to say Abigail every time... it feels a bit formal (though I do like it more as well!), but the more you do it, the easier it will be.

How about a variation on the 'swear jar', you (and your husband) put a quarter in the 'goose jar' when you slip up? He might not be so put out when he cashes in on your habit, and it will help draw your attention to it when there's an immediate consequence... Hmm, parental discipline.

Love Jen's idea! I'd also ask my son to give me a signal every time I use the name; clap his hands, raise his finger, whistle. You will gradually catch yourself during, then just before, using the name.

Good for you for honoring your son's request. Or at least working in that direction!

I mix up my daughter's and my granddaughter's names calling each by the other's names. Both do not like this. So I consciously stop before I say the name of either one. This is gradually helping. It does get awkward at times and I've had to be creative so that they don't notice what I'm doing. So far they haven't caught on.

I really like Jen's suggestion of a "wrong name" jar. I'm going to try that with my mix up. My granddaughter will love it. My daughter won't. Oh, well.

As to surviving adolescence. All sorts of things I said or did embarrassed my daughter. Some of the things I could not change. She survived and now laughs about them.

Haha goose is cute. We started calling our daughter "goober" as a baby which has stuck. My brother in law calls her that too. She is only 2 so its not quite an issue but we've slowly stopped calling her that as much, it was just a matter of habit. I've said goober in front of friends before and they looked at me funny, like why is she calling her adorable baby girl a goober??

MY oldest sons nick name is coco. his real name is coalton but kids have a hard time saying it he picked it up in grade school since he had a hard name to say. I met another colton with the same nickname. when they got older they just adjusted to it realizing they had a hard name to say. I do it alot to aggrevate him. if I am really bored and want to aggrevate him I say "im coco for cocoa puffs." or "puff puff cocoa puff" I did this with both coaltons and they both just laughed at it.

at the age he is at it is embarassing. its an age thing. but when they get older they become more accepting of it. it will become more humorous of it when he gets older. I am now teaching my 2 yr old to say "I'm coco for cocoa puffs" just to aggrevate my oldest one and when i try to teach him to say it my oldest is like "MOM" and just starts laughing. But at 7 that is just so embarassing like kissing mom. my nephews all call my son coco too. he doesn't get mad because he knows his name is hard for a kid to pronounce and when they get old enough to pronounce it the name has already stuck.

Ask your son to remind you (nicely) if you slip up and say it. If he does it often enough, you'll start checking your tongue before you spit it out. Good luck.

My son being a third "Don" in the family ended up with D, Donny or DD or Ding or DJ. Poor guy he answered to them all though. As he got older he asked the same. Do you think I would remember "no". His friends as teenagers called him DD and he didn't care. When I get mad at him he gets the middle name which is Mathew. Needless to say his friends started calling him Mathew. He is now older still answers to Ding but I don't say it very often around his friends, but they know the Mathew and know I want to speak with him. He has no hard feelings and really doesn't care. its funny to him now and his friends call him Don for the most part now that he's older or Donny. They don't use his nicknames but I still do. He survived and I'm sure your son will to. Eventually you will stop as well or at least not use it as often.

My 11 yo is "monkey", "munchkin", and assorted other terms of endearment. He even let's his baseball team call him Leprechaun, or Leppy for short, because he's little and very lucky. Eventually, your son will stop caring, but I understand that you would like to honor his wishes, I like the secret signal idea. Then you can know and he doesn't have to be snippy about it. I would also let him know that the name came from love and he might like it. Besides Goose from Top Gun, there was a really great pitcher Goose Gossage who played 22 years in Major League Baseball.
I hope he let's you keep calling him his nickname. It's very cute.
S.

L.

I am extremely anti nickname. I had a nickname growing up (Missy) which I grew to hate. As I became older and started at my first job in HS, I made the conscious decision to change it. It has been a difficult road. My family has been the toughest to change and frankly will never change. I felt uncomfortable asserting my right to use my own legal name. Weird, I know! My immediate family never openly discouraged the switch but certainly didn't support my decision. What a difference it would have made if they helped the process!

Respect your son's wishes and make the switch. Don't allow others to call him "Goose". Do it now while he is young. I like Jen's idea about the jar. Make it fun but take it very serious for his sake.

Michelle

I call my daughter Bug. I have for as long as I can remember. It started as LoveBug, and got shortened somewhere along the line. At 13 I'm still waiting for her to tell me to stop, but she never has. She did ask me once why I call her that, and when I explained that it just happened she rolled her eyes at me and said "whatever" but she's still OK with it. The trade off though is sometimes she'll call me by my given name instead of Mom, and as I am one of very few parents who will allow this, there is no fun in it for her and after awhile she goes back to calling me Mom.

Old youngest is 3, his name is Emmanuel but his brother "named" him Mayo when he was born, since real name was too hard to say. Most people call him Mayo now and I guess at some point we will have to stop. As of right now when people ask him what his name is he says Mayo...........so sorry no advice here:)

On the upside... you can always edit out the love scene and have him watch Top Gun, and the nickname will be much less "baby-ish" :) :) :) Then again, Goose DOES sort of meet a tragic end... 6 of one, half a dozen of another.

But back to your actual Q:

We have that problem in two ways

1) On the day he was born, Kiddo became "Honey Bear". I think he was 6 or 7 minutes old. That name stuck like GLUE. When he was 4, he objected to the "honey" portion of it, and it took about 6 months of constant shortening to "Bear" before it wasn't what rolled off my tongue. It's not solid, I still occasionally say "Hey....Honeybear..." But what it really is is CONSTANT checking & altering. What helped the most was finding ANOTHER nickname to call him.

2) He currently ABHORS the words "Mommy" & "Daddy". I don't use them in public. Usually the only times I use them are on printed things like chore charts, or if I'm in the house and it "Hey! Daddy's home!" or "That's daddy's". He'll get over it. I don't use them in public.

We do use family-sign / codewords for when we're in public and want to pass on info silently.

I completely disagree that he will get over it. It's true, he may. But it's just as likely he will hate more with time. My mother (like each of her 7 siblings) has a nickname. She is 69 yrs old and HATES that nickname to this day. Her siblings (and her parents when they were alive) all insist on calling her by her nickname. She tried to get them to call her by her given name, but finally gave up. She moved on to damage control and goes to great lengths to ensure her siblings are the only ones who call her by that name.

As an aside, I never could figure out why, in a family with eight children, they thought that everyone having multiple names was a good idea. I was 25 before I realized that Ray and Mickey were the same person!

It Takes 21 Days To Break A Bad Habit. Write down your goal. List your reasons for changing or eliminating your habit. Sustaining Motivation: Review your list of reasons for quitting or changing and Create mental pictures of yourself as having already succeeded with your habit change. Ask your son for help. Explain that it's a hard habit to break, but you're willing to do it for him with his help. (If he could kindly point out the misuse of his name)

As for nicknames...I was constantly called HH by my aunt, come to find out around 10yrs or older it meant 'Hurricane H.'. Now I don't think that was appropriate, I think my aunt was overwhelmed by a new step child in the family...but it doesn't bother me and I'm grown and fine. My mom would call me poky some times. Now I thought it was Poky from Gumby (loved the cartoon, so it made sense when I was little). Found out years later...it's cause I'm really poky. Yep, totally describes me, doesn't bother me though.
Good Luck

surprisingly my 7 year old has not told me to stop with his nickname - I try not to use it when we are out but he is still my Pooper or Poops. I have called him that since he was only a few days old. Mostly use it when waking him up "come on poops it's time to get up" I know this one will come to an end at some point but for now he has not said anything to me about it.

Oh NO! I have a 7 yo "Goose" too! I don't call him that, but my dh always had....my mom used to chime in "That's going to stick..." And it has. So far--not an issue....Just had to laugh!

Yes! You'll be amazed but he will outgrow his 'embarrassment!
My husband used to call our daughter "Meri-moo" or moo for short and I've called her mousie since she was tiny... at 14 she doesn't bat an eyelash if I call her mousie in public although when she was in grade school it wasn't 'cool' and I'm sure she'd give anything to hear her now deceased daddy call her "Meri-moo"

I had to respond, not with advice, but because I call my daughter Goose, too! Like you, I think it started with Silly Goose, then morphed into Goose, Goosey Bird, Bird, Birdy, Lady Bird, Lady, Girly, and on and on. It's so unconscious now, I honestly have no idea what I call her most of the time. She's 4 now, and I am anticipating that she will eventually want me to stop. It will be sad because it is such a holdover from her babyhood. I am reading the advice you get with interest.