Friday, August 19, 2005
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What It Means To Me
I know that I am a traditional person, but there are some things I just cannot accept. I believe that a child should call an adult by their last name, i.e. Mrs. Smith. I am not happy with Mrs. Bev, but it is certainly better than a two-year old referring to me simply as Bev. The other day at tumbling, a friend of mine helped Steve while I was feeding the baby. When I walked over there, I told Steve to say thank you to 'Mrs. Smith'. She said, "Oh, no. He can call me Jane." I said I just couldn't have him do that; I could compromise with Mrs. Jane, but that was it. It's the same thing in our neighborhood. We are kind-of stuck with having Steve call our neighbors Mr. Rick or Mrs. Jill, because everyone else had kids before we did and that's what they decided on. Another unfortunate thing about infertility. I would rather him call them by their last names, but I feel the precendent has already been set. I just think it's a sign of respect to address an adult by their last name, thus making the difference between speaking to an adult and speaking to another child. I just do.
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just de-lurking to say I completely agree! I grew up referring to the friends of my parents as "Mr or Mrs so-and-so (last name)", and that just felt normal to me. As an adult, all of these people have since declared their desire for me to refer to them by their first names, but as a kid, it was last name all the way. Now that *I* have kids, I sort of want to groom the same respect. I want my kids to honor the fact that there IS a difference between an adult and a peer, and adults are NOT their peers. But most of our friends claim they would feel too weird being called Mr or Mrs last-name and request that the kids call them by their first names. Today, it seems that only doctors and teachers are called Mr/Dr or Mrs/Dr whatever. My sons preschool teacher even had the kids call her by her first name, yet I continued to refer to her as Miss Nadine, not just Nadine. I find that I am torn and completely caught in the middle - wanting to enforce some measure of respect vs. honoring the wishes of my friends. To their defense, it WOULD feel odd to be referred to as "Mrs. X" and know they're talking to ME. I often don't call these friends by their first names in front of my kid, saying instead, "why don't you ask Josh's mom if that's ok?" or something. But it's back-firing: now my kid will address the adult as "Josh's mom", as in "Josh's Mom, can we do X?" instead of a first name or Mrs LastName. Most everyone laughs when this happens, but it's indicative of the issue! We live in a VERY liberal/casual/free-spirited town and formalities just aren't DONE here, but my husband and I agree on this issue and need to get serious about enforcing it. We need to stop referring to our friends by their first names in front of the kids, instead calling them by the name we want THEM to call them - Mr. or Mrs. LastName. Tough transition!
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