Welcome to speed Round Sunday on the Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share a
mini episode from our past for your weekend listening pleasure. We'll be back tomorrow
with a brand new episode. Maybe we should move to our speed round and
discuss whether your child has ever accused you of giving him or her the wrong
name and wanting to change it. Did your child accuse you of failing at
the competition of naming? How about you, Terry, Well, I don't
know about disliking her name or or you know, think I failed it naming.
But last night at the dinner table, we had this perfectly entertaining and
harmless discussion about middle names. And usually we spend our whole, our whole
dinner table conversation. I read out celebrities names and my husband tries to guess
how old they are, who's people whose birth day? But this time we
actually had one of those family conversations that you want to have. Everybody's contributing,
everybody's laughing. My daughter said she wondered if someday maybe she could go
by her middle name. She said, her middle name is Catherine. She
said she would like to be Kathy, and I said, sure, you
can be Kathy, And I said, well, I'll go by our middle
name. And my son said, can I be Dave because his middle name
is David. Say, it's sure, Kathy and Dave. And then my
husband and I said our middle names, and so we were talking about,
yeah, we'll be Liz and Lee and Kathy and Dave, and we'll want
trips and what can the dogs middle name? There's a wonderful discussion. So
before bedtime, my son asks me, can I go by my middle name
on Facebook? And I said, yeah, you probably don't want to do
that because people won't know who you are. They'll try to friend people,
they won't know who you are. People will look for you, they won't
know who you are. So he said, okay. This morning I found
out my daughter went on and put her middle name on Facebook. So she
now has her first initial, her middle name, and her last name.
And of course the moment she did this, she's getting all these questions,
who is this person? Why didn't you change your name? And people are
worried do you not like your name? Are you having a crisis about your
name? Why do you want to change your name? So we had to
go on and say we had this funny discussion at dinner. I thought it
would be funny to change my name on faceboot. Oh, well, it
still me. But the thing with Facebook is when you change your name,
you can't change it again for sixty days. So she's stuck with this impetuous
decision for two months. So I did not know that, by which time
everybody will have forgotten what her actual name is. But who are you again?
Why he changes it again? So it's like, apparently she's changed her
name for sixty days. I don't know. We were gonna it was gonna
be a fun little thing we were going to joke about as a family,
but it kind of took a turn. But I do intend to call my
son Dave whenever possible. Now, yeah, Dave for dinner. Well,
I've I found out. And I can't even remember how this came up,
But a couple of months ago, my daughter said that when she was at
the height of her love for high school musical she really thought that she would
like to be named Gabriella. And you know, she did not care for
the name she has, and Gabriella would be so much better. But she
never told me that at the time, So I guess she wasn't all that
worked up about it, because I never never to write that name down a
bunch of times, just for properly. I wish she never told you,
so she didn't do anything visual. I don't know. She didn't have Facebook
at the time for sure. I think she was eight. Life is so
much easier before there was Facebook. I'm just thinking about if I had Facebook
when I was my daughter's age, and if people talk to me the way
they talked to her, like friends of my mother's had approached me, I
would have been very displeased. I would locked people a lot quicker than she
does. How about you, Nicole, do your kids like their names?
You know that's funny. I've never really asked them, and I meant to
before we were going to talk about it today, but it just slipped my
mind. But no, they've never really I think both of them are quite
content with our names. I have to say I wanted to change my name
when I was growing up. I did too. I mean, I hated
my name. My name was just so weird in the town that I lived
in. But yeah, neither of my kids. Huh. So does that
mean you win this conversation or you lose this conversation. I think I guess
you win it. Naming, Yeah, I don't know. No, maybe
they don't like their names. I'll have to ask them when we finished this,
and I'll come back and let you know. Although I have to say
that the name that my daughter, my daughter took her middle name, which
is when that we gave to her, her first name, kind of came
with her. We americanized it. But so maybe that means she's choosing the
name I gave her. There you go rashly and if tatuously, she will
not hate it from now on because she's stuck with it. Sixty days.
She's stuck with it. Let this be a lesson to you. Everybody tell
your teenager. If you change your name on Facebook prepared. You have to
stick with it for two months, and apparently there is some cut off after
which you can't change it anymore at all. You're just stuck with it.
Facebook does not want people playing fast and loose with their names. Apparently,
what kind of I kind of get. Yeah, well, I know changing
the name of a page is a big deal. Yeah, but but I
would think that you would be able to call yourself whatever you want to call
yourself. But right, but they don't want people impersonating other people or no,
I'm curious. I want to know what my kids think. I text
my daughter right now, I'm like, Mom, how are you talking about?
Actually, I'll go back to in a couple of minutes finding out.
I'm gonna find out.