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Toddlers

21st Feb 2020

‘No say dada’ – my toddler will only refer to her dad by his name and it’s hilarious

Melissa Carton

Anyone else’s child do this?

My daughter is two and a half and lately is a non stop chatter box.

She has full blown conversations with her teddies and will follow her older brother around bossing him about.

She’s particularly found of waiting outside the bathroom to tell people to ‘wash your hands’. Oddly enough this obsession to hygiene does not extend to washing her own hands, especially after she has eaten chocolate which she will then wipe in her hair.

Ah toddlers.

One thing that has happened during this new found talk-athon is that while she will refer to me as mammy she will only refer to her dad as Carl and to be honest I find it hilarious.

Statistically babies will say ‘dada’ long before they ever start to begin to say ‘mama’ and this was very much the case with my daughter.

Dada was one of the first words that appeared on the scene, while mama was quite a ways away. I felt a bit left out, not going to lie.

Go to the trouble of housing her in my belly for nine months and then giving birth and I don’t even get a ‘mama’, typical.

Recently though dada has gone right out the window and now she will only call after her dad by his name and while he is a bit miffed, I can’t stop laughing.

Mostly because she is 100 per cent doing it on purpose because she knows it annoys him.

I’ve told him before that he has to stop getting her to say dada because the more he says ‘no say dada’ the more she calls him Carl.

Sometimes she even mimics the way I call up the stairs to him.

My poor husband has never had sisters so he has no idea the ways girls tease but he is beginning to learn.

For the time being I think he’s just going to have to ride out this wave and deal with our little messer because the more he tries to correct her the more she insists that it’s not dada, it’s Carl.