Mixed Messages

   My husband has always called me “Big Mamma”. Well this created a very embarrassing moment at the grocery store when my daughter was very young. We were in the produce section minding our own business; my daughter was in the child seat part of the shopping cart when a large woman passed us by. My daughter said, “Hey”, “Look at that Big Mamma”, I got real embarrassed and I gave the lady a big smile hoping she did not hear what my daughter said. I quickly said to my daughter, in a tone of voice where the lady could hear me, just in case she heard what my daughter said, “Honey”, “I am the Big Mama and you should not call other people that because it is my nick name”.

   The mother in me and the educator in me found myself giving my daughter a lesson on what is appropriate to say and what is not. My daughter did not think there was anything wrong with saying this because she hears it everyday in our household as a term of endearment to me from my husband. I guess you could call it a “Pet name”. This was not an easy concept to teach my daughter because in our household it was a good name, but she could not call anyone else “Big Mamma”, and this confused her. This was definitely a “double-standard” moment.

   I know now that in Harro’s “Cycle of Socialization” the diagram shows the “First Socialization” as being the part of our lives where the trust and love is built, we are taught to play our roles and follow rules, we shape our self concepts, perceptions of us and others, values, expectations of future roles, and we get mixed messages and feelings and become guilty for not understanding because we are confused about these messages