Strollerderby
Don’t Let Your Kid Call Me Missus
Listening to my daughter talk, you’d think my parents were
the Duggars.
It’s Aunt Jennifer this and Uncle Dan that. She has a lot of
aunts and uncles. And yet, my husband is an only child, and I have just one
brother.
“Aunt” and “uncle” are as much terms of respect in our house
as they are of endearment. Acquaintances are Mr. Jones and Ms. Johnson, but
anyone close enough for our daughter to actually learn their first name gets
that extra moniker tacked on the front to distinguish them from her peers.
I thought this was pretty normal until I went south on
vacation.
My in-laws introduced their friends to our daughter as “Miss
Joan” and “Mr. Bill,” “Mr. Floyd” and “Miss Martha.” They were the type of
people my husband as a kid would have called “aunt” and “uncle” if he’d grown
up in our household. In his own, it was “Mr.” and “Mrs.” with a first name
thrown in there.
I know other families would be shocked at the usage of first
names at all, preferring their kids use mister and missus and surnames only. In
our house, the deference afforded by the use of “aunt” or “uncle” is enough.
What do you do in your house Babble readers? Do your
kids have a familiarity with your friends’ first names?
Image: Not on the High Street
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14 Comments
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amGrowing up in upstate New York many of my parents friends were known to my siblings and I as ‘Aunt’ or ‘Uncle’. As an adult I find myself doing the same with my daughter. My close friends are people who love her and I want her to respect, not treat as a peer of her own. I think the ‘Aunt’ or ‘Uncle’ title designates that in a way even a young child understands without any thought required as to what’s appropriate.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI didn’t hear about the “Miss” so and so until we moved south–we lived in the Memphis area for 20+ years and I grew to like the “miss” preceded by my name. It was less formal than the “Mrs.” followed by my last name, but more formal than just my first name as uttered by a child. However I take my cues from others and ask them how they wish to be addressed by my children. It’s best not to offend the adult in the situation.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amAll grown-ups get a title in our house. For me it’s an issue of showing respect. We tend towards the southern style Miss/Mr which was the practice in KY where we lived up until this year. Now we live in NH and most people seem to accept it.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI’m Californian, and my parents always introduced their friends by their first names. Course’ here even CEOs go by their first names. We saved the Mr/Miss/Mrs stuff for teachers.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI’m from the South, and we called family friends [mostly church friends] Miss or Mister–in fact, at the age of 23, I still call most of them that!
One of my favorite things, though, is what we call our next-door neighbors, both of whom happen to be cousins of my grandfather. They are married, but one of them is Uncle Roger and the other is Miss Carolyn. I’m still not sure how they got those designations.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amWe use Miss Firstname and Mr. Firstname unless the adult would rather be called by last name. We do not used first names alone to refer to adults. It is how I was raised and I still call my friends’ parents by the same Miss/Mr I called them in high school. Aunt and Uncle are reserved for actualy aunts and uncles, and one or two extremely close friends of mine and DH’s.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI grew up in the Northeast, and my parents’ friends were called by their first names. Now I live in the South, and we ask our friends what they’d prefer to be called. Our friends across the street are Miss Kaye and Mr. Tim, but our friends who are also from the Northeast are just Mark and Debbie. I can’t stand be be called “Miss Barb” so I come out and tell my friends and their kids that I’d prefer “Barb.”
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amWith close friends, we use the Aunt/Uncle designation (I’m in Chicago, a Michigan transplant). Our church family is very close, so I prefer Aunt/Uncle, and this is what I called my parents’ distant cousins when I was growing up, though in an entirely different church setting. Miss/Mr seems so formal to me, but a friend of mine, from CA, has her kids call me by “Miss”, so she’s the only exception to that. Just writing this, though, I’ve noticed that we let our kids call acquaintances by their first name only.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amHere in Maryland the “Miss Joan” and “Mr. Bill” is the standard, so we’ll probably go with that. I still call a friend’s mom “Miss Pam.” But then I have another friend whose mom goes by the nickname “Boo” and we’ve always just called her “Boo.” I believe her own kids call her “Boo,” as well.
Shannon LC Cate commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI grew up calling all of my parents’ friends by their first names. Many of them are people I consider honorary aunts and uncles and grandparents. My kids call my very closest friends aunt and uncle and others mostly by first name only.
I don’t like it when people tell their kids to call me Miss First Name. First name is fine by me.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI didn’t hear about all of this Miss/Mr. First Name business until we moved down south from DC. (Where I would have called everyone Mr./Ms. Last Name growing up.)
I think it’s cute and polite enough.
Our two year old calls all of her daycare teachers, acquaintances, and just general people in her life “Miss/Mr. First Name.” Aunts and uncles have that title tacked onto the front of their first names. Anyone who is very close to the family that is not a relative (like my best friend) has an “auntie or uncie” put in front of their first name.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amWe use “Miss First-Name” and “Mr. First-Name” around here, and we do live in the south. To me, Aunt and Uncle seem too intimate. I actually would worry about it imposing on our friends, if they don’t want that kind of relationship with our kids. Kind of like the single mom who introduces her date as “Your new daddy!” Not on the same scale, obviously, but the same kind of idea. Miss and Mr. does okay to me, a nice balance of informality and respect.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amThough my parents were strict about a lot of things, we grew up referring to adult friends of the family by just their first names. Even my aunts and uncles were just called by their first names. My mom hated the “Miss So-and-so” tradition (yes, we’re southern). Now that I have a kid, though, I feel weird about children calling adults by just their first names (though I wouldn’t mind being on the receiving end of that). I just worry about how others will take it, so we go with “Miss.”
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amThat’s how I was growing up! My mother is an only child, so we had ‘love aunties,’ ‘love uncles’ and ‘love cousins.’ I remember having to explain to a school counselor what a ‘love cousin’ was. I always preferred that to calling them Mrs. Colucci or Mr. Twilley.
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