for over 2-1/2 yrs now, I’ve struggled w/my stepsons calling me by my first name — while I realize it’s common practice in many blended families, I feel VERY uncomfortable w/children referring to adults by first names, as if the child is the adult’s peer… my DH and I discussed this at rather some length, and he understands my need for the children to respect me as an authority figure in our home; he also understands the incongruity of their calling every OTHER adult in their lives by some title — they don’t call their teachers at school or church by their first names, they don’t call their parents or any of their friends’ parents by their first names, etc. — so w/the stipulation in Larry’s divorce decree that his children are never to refer to any other woman as “mother,” we had to come up w/something else for the boys to call me…
I spent many years in Germany when I was growing up, during part of which time we lived close enough to the French border to go out for dinner in France (yes, we needed our passports to go to dinner on those occasions); also in my youth, I was fluent in French (Germans whom I met would frequently ask me if I was from Alsace-Lorraine, a region in France on the German border, since my German had traces of a French accent; perhaps just as telling was being disqualified as a native French speaker at a high-school regional foreign language competition, altho’ we spoke nothing but English in our home) — Larry and I decided to explore French as an option for a name or title by which the boys could call me w/o sending Larry’s ex into conniptions (again)… from that point, we finally arrived at a relatively easy solution: the boys would simply refer to me as “step-mother,” in French: belle-mère, en Français (the English “step-mother” does sound very klugey and awkward and stiff).
I now have a title that the boys are readily learning to use, and I’m surprised by the added sense of dignity that gives me in my own home, and I’m very pleased that this change HAS in fact had the effect I hoped it would in diminishing my resentment toward the boys for addressing me as if I’m their peer and not a parent, and it also appears to be beginning to have an effect on the boys as well, putting me into an authority position (where parents belong) by not addressing me the same way they address their peers (by first name)… while I realize that it was hardly a situation of their making (it was partly perpetuated by their mother, whom I suspect wanted to try to maintain some kind of superior position by denying Larry’s new wife the respect of a title and reducing me to the status of the children’s peer by actually encouraging the boys to address me by my first name), they were nevertheless the ones conducting themselves thus day in and day out, in the absence of any other instruction; we’ve now provided them w/that necessary “other instruction,” and the boys have been happy and surprisingly quick to learn the new habit of calling me by my title… who’d have thought a comparatively little thing could make such a big difference all around? 
