When Grandmas don’t want to be “Grandmas” anymore

I have recently been confronted with a dilemma and I am now battling with myself on weather or not it is my decision to make. Who decides what your children will call your parents and when did this become such a major issue? When did Grandmas stop wanting to be “Grandmas”? The majority of people my age, who are now approaching child bearing age, called their Grandma…well “Grandma” or “Nanna” or “Granny.” Our parents fear that the new title of all things will make them appear old is irrational, they are old no matter what we call them! The fact in itself that their adult children are having children of their own speaks for their age. And there is nothing wrong with that. For some reason our parents and in-laws are not going gracefully into the next phases of their lives, into GRANDMAS! The new generation of grandparents are approaching their new titles with real resistance to tradition. They want to be “GiGi”, “NuNu”, “BeBo” or “CiCi” (names better suited for circus clowns), they want to be hip and trendy. Before you know it all of the grandmas, grannies and grandmothers will be a distant memory, a what used to be. I do not mind an ethnic alternative such as “nonna” (Italian), “bubbe” (Jewish) or “abuela” (Spanish) because, unlike make up words, they mean grandma in a personal way that is special to their families’ culture.

I get that our parents want to be trendy, I’m not one to shun a trend but a name that will stick with you for the rest of your life should not be too trendy. Trends come and go, if you choose to be called by some ridiculous hip trendy name you will be stuck with it long after the trend is dead and gone. I’m fairly unconventional myself but I’m not going to have my children call me by my first name or any other combination of names. What would people think if I decided I was too cool to go by “Mom” and had my children refer to me as their…“Bestie“. Ridiculous right?

I am not saying that our parents do not want to love and nurture our kids in all the best ways. The truth is, they want to be grandparents, just not in stereotypical “Grandma” ways. They want to be more like a cool aunt, “Auntie Grandma“. I am concerned that by taking a new name and a new role in our children’s lives our parents could potentially deprive our children of all the “Grandma” experiences that we all, as adults, cherish. Most of us have memories with our grandparents that we would not trade for the world and they are not memories of Granny trying to be cool.