Many families have customs and traditions where they name their babies after a family member or loved one. Many grandparents feel honored and appreciative when their kids name their grandchildren after them.
Others, however, expect their kids to name their children after them—which, can go over rather poorly with their kids when they don't actually plan on doing so. It can definitely cause some drama.
"A little bit of background: I'm named after my mother, just like she's named after hers, and also just like my mom and hers, she and I do NOT have a good relationship. Pretty much never have as far back as I can remember," she wrote on Reddit.
"The context of the name is also key, because it's a book character whose epithet is "curse breaker", as in I will do anything to break the curse of shitty mother/daughter relationships in my line," she continued in the post.
"My daughter was born almost four years ago, and I think my mom has pronounced her name correctly less than a handful of times. An example of using wrong names is my daughter's name is "Sierra", but my mom says "Sarah". Every. Single. Time," she added.
"At the beginning, I nicely tried to walk her through the pronunciation, and she could say the syllables correctly, and then could say the name correctly.
Until the next time. When I started getting upset about it her excuse was "You know me, I just don't pronounce words right" in an aw-shucks kind of way," she continued.
"Things came to a head a couple months ago when we got into an argument about it and she said "this wouldn't even be a problem if you had named her [our name]"..." she admitted, finding out that her fears were true.
"There it was. I'd had my suspicions, but now it was confirmed. My mom is so petty that she purposefully mispronounces her own granddaughter's name because I didn't use ours," she admitted.
She asked if she was wrong for reacting poorly to her mom every time she mispronounces her daughter's name.
One Reddit user asked, "why are you still interacting with your mom?"
"I agree with you that it is petty and disrespectful of your mom to mispronounce your daughter's name. I also think it could be damaging to your daughter that her grandmother can't or won't pronounce her name correctly."
"Don't accept her "you know my pronunciation!" bullshit, call it out. Tell her why it's a problem, tell her why you think she's doing it. It will be a tough confrontation but it goes deeper than just the name - you need to break the hold that she's still trying to enforce," another added.
"Your daughter's at risk of getting a complex from her shitty grandma. Maybe point that out to her. Or. Start doing it to your mom, on top of the "who's sarah?" game.
Doesn't matter that you have the same name. If she wants to complain about it, remind her that she clearly doesn't care about mispronouncing her granddaughter's name so why should you?"
What do you think? Let us know!
