My children have stopped calling me dad - should I be offended?

Daddy is no more. Three weeks ago, I heard a voice say, "Rhymer, could you please pass me the salt?" I did a double take. These were not the strident, increasingly confident intonations of the 10- year-old but rather the still-sweet, little-girlish vocalisations of her younger sister. Polly, the 10-year-old, has been calling me "Rhymer" for more than a year now. But for the seven-year-old, Claudia, this is a new departure.

It is, I will admit, a bit disconcerting. Three weeks later and both of them now regularly call me "Rhymer". The oddest thing is when they refer to me in the third person. "Mummy," they'll say, "is Rhymer coming swimming with us?" Your first thought is, "My life has become an episode of The Simpsons and I am Homer." It's true that they sometimes call their mother Jane. But I don't think they get quite the satisfaction out of it that they do out of calling me by my first name.


Source : Yahoo