Margaret, who in real life goes to the same parish as us, wrote in the comments:
“PS. Milo got annoyed at me during CVBS [Catholic Vacation Bible School] when I told him–gently–that my name was Mrs. B. “No,” he insisted, “Your name is ‘Margaret’!”
Ha.
Seriously, I think my children will never figure out the first-name-basis thing.
Readers who may live in the American South or outside the United States of America will please be asked not to be scandalized by what follows, as it reflects a genuine cultural difference between where you are and where I am.
The parish we belong to is the only situation in my children’s lives where adults commonly introduce themselves to children, and refer to themselves in children’s presence, as “Mr. So-and-so” or “Mrs. Such-and-such.”
Remember, my kids don’t go to school, so they don’t have the experience of speaking to teachers and staff who would properly remain professionally distant. Everyone else in kids’ lives, it seems, is totally informal with them. When they go to science classes at the nature center, the naturalist introduces herself: “Hi, I’m Leah.” When they come with me to the grocery store, Oscar can read the cashier’s name tag: “JAMES, customer service associate.” Even my kids’ pediatrician says “Hi Milo, my name is Sylvia,” before she asks him to say aaahh. Just about all of my friends are close enough to our whole family that it never even occurred to me to teach my kids to call them “Mrs. X” or “Mr. Y;” they use the same first names I do. Our old parish was similarly informal (yes, it was “Father Mike” and “Father John” too). So when we switched over to the new one, it was a bit of a culture shock to me to hear new friends introduce me to their kids as “Mrs. A.” (Nearly ten years after my marriage, this moniker still seems to belong to my husband’s mom, not to me. I suppose I could insufferably insist on Dr. A., but that’s been taken too.)
Generally, the world suffers from too little, not too much, civility. If I could go back and start over, I think I would teach my kids to refer to adults with their titles and surnames until invited to do otherwise, but I think it’s too late for me to learn. It seems a little bit silly to insist that the children call our close friends “Mr.” and “Mrs.;” but then, as I look back, I remember that my mother taught me to call her close friends “Aunt So and So” — a term of endearment and respect (although it was a bit confusing, as I thought they were all really my aunts for an embarrassingly long time.)
Anybody else not sure how to navigate this one?
UPDATE: Steve, in the comments, has an idea I’d never heard before. I’ll think about it!
UPDATE AGAIN: Margaret brings the discussion over to her own blog. Her commenters are much more uncomfortable with children addressing adults by their first names than I am! But I want to stress I’m not uncomfortable at all with the choice to teach children to be more formal with adults, it’s just that I didn’t grow up that way and so it didn’t occur to me to do it.
bearing blog 