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I CAN’T DECIDE which is worse: the prospect of raising a rude child or the prospect of calling my friends Miss Karen and Mister Mike.
Some people can pull it off, the practice of tacking a courtesy title onto an adult’s first name. It teaches kids that grown-ups deserve respect but saves the more formal “Mr. Smith” or “Dr. Jones” for adults they don’t know very well.
Makes perfect sense. But what about those of us who can’t muster the will to call a high-powered, take-no-prisoners attorney “Miss Lisa”?
We turned to Peggy Post, the great-granddaughter-in-law of manners maven Emily Post.
Post, who has a book coming out this fall called “Emily’s Magic Words: Please, Thank You, and More” (HarperCollins), is actually a fan of the Miss First Name approach. But she says it’s not the only way to teach your kids about titles, a topic she finds herself addressing frequently — and carefully.
“There’s a lot of confusion — what’s been traditional, what’s viewed as respectful,” she says, “and what’s modern.”
We’re always hearing what an informal society we’ve become — flip-flops at the White House, jeans on the campaign trail, young celebs who make “Madonna” sound stuffy (LiLo, Posh, K-Fed).
Still, there are limits.
“It does offend some people to be called ‘Mary’ by a 5-year-old,” Post says. “There are still a lot of adults who expect children to call them by a title.”
Reason enough, Post argues, to teach your child to do so. She endorses a few different approaches. Take your pick, or use some combination of the following. Or ignore them altogether and pray you don’t raise a gum-snapping, foul-mouthed heathen.
Traditional: Teach your child to use Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr. or other appropriate title for every non-family adult he/she meets. You also should call adults by their titles when you’re talking to your child, for example: “Mrs. Davis is going to pick you up tomorrow.” But when you’re talking to another adult, Post says, you can cut the “Mrs.” routine. “If you’re talking about Mary to another adult, you can explain to your child ‘I call her Mary, but you call her Mrs. Davis.’ ”
And when this explanation is met with the inevitable “Why?” Post’s response: “Because it’s been done for years and years, and it shows adults that you respect them.”
Flexible: Let the individual adult decide how he/she wants to be addressed. Say you introduce your child to Ms. Wallace and Ms. Wallace says “Oh, call me Suzy.” Parents can either allow the child to use “Suzy,” or employ the method Post prefers: “Use Miss Suzy. I think that is a really good way to get a child used to using titles but also have room for intimacy.” Post says the Miss Suzy approach is especially common in the South.
“When kids know an adult, they can use their first name and a title,” she says. “You can still be respectful calling an adult by their first name, if that’s what they want.”
Intimate: Post says it’s OK for your children to address close family friends by their first names — provided you’ve cleared this with the friends. “If your kids have been growing up with these friends and you know them really well, you can let your kids know that this is an exception,” she says. But the conversation needs to contain a caveat. “Let them know when they get a new friend from school and they’re meeting the mother and father for the first time, they need to call them Mr. and Mrs.”
Some people have their kids address close family friends as “Aunt Krista” and “Uncle Rob” as a way to keep titles in play, Post adds.
Your specific approach has to be an individual decision, but the important thing is that you tackle the topic.
“I really recommend teaching children the longtime tradition of calling adults by a title,” she says. “There will be exceptions, and that’s fine. But manners really make people react positively. Manners don’t have to be scary and formal.”