Eva, Ava...

My poor nieceling is going to have to respell her name her whole life thanks to not being Evie.

*taps foot*

Maybe I can just start calling her by her full name? Here, Evangeline, do you see the froggy? There we go! Oh, Evangeline, don't do that!

Clearly, I can't just keep calling her "baby" all the time - sooner or later, that'll be painfully not working. I could substitute some *other* cutesy nickname - Peanut, Ducky, Spider, Bunny, Kitten, Kookaburra....

But I think Evangeline is the way to go. Cuz it's her name.

(Ana's reached "resigned acceptance" regarding *her* real name. She doesn't like acknowledging that she's got two names, Ana and Angelique.)

The sign of abuse everybody forgets...

It's not that it isn't listed on Every Single List of What Abusers Do... it's just the one nobody talks about.

It's the one where the abuser puts all his/her feelings on you. You make me happy. You made me love you. You're the reason I keep on living (like we can't recognize a veiled suicide threat when we hear it, right? Except that lots of people don't).

Now, plenty of reasonable, well-meaning, non-abusive people say things like that, thinking they're sweet. In and of itself, this isn't a good way to tell if your new person is abusive.

But for a certain segment of the population, it's just too easy to move from "You make me love you" to "You made me hit you" or "You were so hot, I couldn't help myself" and "If you leave me, I'll have to kill myself".

It's a complete lack of acknowledgement that they're ultimately in control of their actions, and some of it is abusive in and of itself. Threatening to harm somebody if you don't do what you want? That's abusive. My uncle is pulling this crap on my grandmother right now, threatening to leave and not take care of her if she doesn't start giving him more money. Half my family is making a mass trek to her right now to re-convince her that her son, unfortunately, is a jerk, and he doesn't deserve any more handouts or attention - other people can help out.

I'm a bit strange. Since I've read so many of those lists on what abusers do, I always associate those phrases with abuse (and that's definitely it - it's not personal experience that taught me "I had to love you" can be dangerous, no worries there!), which is causing me some trouble now - Ana goes to her toddler/pre-schooler things, and I cringe every time I hear a child's adult tell them that such-and-such an activity "really makes mommy/daddy/grandma happy", or "made me upset".

I know the point is to teach the kids to think about other people when deciding what to do, and I certainly don't think that these adults are abusing their kids - but the association in my mind is still there, y'know?

So, I was thinking about cutesy nicknames...

Not the sort that directly relate to names, just the sort that you can use on anybody.

And I'm thinking - wow, there's a lot of them that are directly related to food.

Cupcake, Cookie, Dumpling, Sweetie, Sugar, Honey, Pumpkin, Peanut... why is that? And why do people tell kids "You're so cute, I could eat you up"? Is cannibalism supposed to be funny? I don't get it.

Anybody willing to list off cutesy nicknames in any language they know? Please? I'm bored. Heck, I'm even tempted to crosspost this.