Pavlov

Are you training them to never say "daddy" again, or are you saying you're conditioned to say "yes" to the daddy-bell?
Does this behavior only occur with one son, or are you not picky?

Even Mayu called me once daddy. It made me laugh.

I prefer my dog "Yves".

Pavlov

On day I wanted to enter an elevator, when a man and a kid, about five years old, came out. The kid smiled at me, then looked at the man and finally pointed at me shouting and laughing “Granddaddy! granddaddy! “
We all started laughing: the young black male, the black kid and me, the elderly honky.
(By the way, I liked to play monopoly - a long time ago)

Arnon

How does the real daddy react?

Pavlov

Don't think so, seems more freudianlike to me.

Sasja

The sons don’t believe I’m their father, I react when they say “daddy” – that’s all.

Arnon

So now you undermine the position of the father by answering in his place when his children call for him?

Ome Arnon

This sounds very serious. In Afrikaans we have found a solution to this predicament: children call father figures who are not their biological father "oom" (literally "uncle"). (I was somewhat shocked the first time I was called "oom" while visiting South Africa. It made me feel I had become a tribal elder, and very old.)

Something similar still exists in contemporary Dutch in the form of "ome". Perhaps you can be "Ome Arnon" to the kids.

But, why don't you just become a real "daddy"? I sense that you have a very deep need to be a parent. Perhaps this is the mothering instinct in you.

I saw on the news (from Eastern Europe) that there was an earthquake in western Greece. Did You notice it, are You harmed?

Arnon

With this comment I want to resign my readership.

Carlos

I agree, Arnon would do great as a father and a husband. It's convincing him that is the difficult part, -note that it's not my ambition to become his wife- he doesn't even wanted to meet the perfect candidate that I had found for him. It breaks my heart.

Jos

We didn't notice the earthquake.

stimuli

Hm, if 'daddy' is the conditioned stimulus, I wonder what the original stimulus was for you to say yes.

Perhaps they ask you questions all the time, so you started saying yes everytime you just hear their voice...

Jealous

I’m almost getting jealous as the previous number one babysitter.
Took me some more time than 1 week for them to call me dad. :)