Terms of endearment in Japanese?

[kellysensei]

In English, parents sometimes call their kids sweetie, honey, my love, or something like that. Are there any similar terms of endearment in Japanese? I have a five-week-old son and am trying to speak to him in Japanese as much as possible, but I refer to him by name or "sweetie" because I don't know what to say in Japanese!

[Jessi]

Good question - for kids, I really don't think there are any kinds of special terms of endearment like that. Instead, it's really common to use "-chan" or "-kun" after the child's first name (or part of their first name, for example... Tomoyuki could become Tomo-chan, etc.) to show affection