call my children by their full names

I'm with you, Helen. I always called my son David as opposed to Dave - of course many people do call him Dave, including me occasionally. My other son is Paul and that's pretty hard to shorten, although for a time he was PK to his friends. My mother-in-law was a great one for tacking on the diminutive "ey" (or "ie"). So the grandchildren were Paulie, Davey, Nicoley (I kid you not), and Bricey. The two who escaped were Kristen and Shannon. In general, I prefer using full names as opposed to nicknames.