I babysit for a friend and sometimes one of the kids likes to play pretend and will start calling me her mom (she's 4) and her sister will join in too.

I totally understand it's innocent fun, but it's hard on me sometimes. My husband and I have been struggling with infertility for 5 years and we have an angle baby who would be around the same age as her.

So when we're outside and she picks flowers, runs over to me and excitedly hand them to me and says "here you go mama, these are for you". Or she's running across the yard yelling "look mommy! See how fast I'm running". It stings a little. It doesn't feel like a game to me. It's not fun for me and sometimes I'm having to fight back tears.

I'll usually silly-ly say "I'm not your mama!". She'll giggle and run off, but most of the time that makes her do it more. I try to come up with a new game and get her really excited about it to distract her from calling me mom, but that only lasts so long or she will carry it into the new game as well.

I'm also not sure how my friend would feel with her kids calling me mommy too. I haven't brought this up to her because she doesn't know about what we have been through and I don't want to sound stupid.

So when she's calling me her mom, how can I get her to stop without her realizing that's what I'm trying to do. I don't want her to feel like she can't play with me or be silly with me, but I want to redirect her in the moment.

And just to be clear, she is playing. It's not like I spend so much time with her and she sees me as a motherly figure, so she's confused. Or anything like that. She'll call me mommy and at the same time call her sister daddy. So it's just all a game to her.

Edit to say...

How in the hell am I overreacting because I don't want someone else's child calling me mommy all the time?? If it were an accident, that's one thing. She does that too, as every child does, and we always just laugh it off. But she is purposely calling my mommy and I don't think that's okay.

I am convinced so many people on this app don't actually read posts fully before responding. They skim and pick up from it what they want. I hope you fell better about yourselves, bashing someone who is already hurting. Removing what we are going through from the situation, I still don't think it's appropriate for children to get in the habit of calling anyone else other than their mother, mommy.

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