My first thought was, Boy playdates sure have changed since I was a kid. The wifi password? I wanted to answer that the wifi password was “Please go out and play in the backyard and get some fresh air without putting your faces into your screens,” but I hesitated and handed over our hexadecimal password.
My second thought was, Mrs. Martell is my mother-in-law, it’s not me.
When I was kid, I don’t really remember calling my friends’ parents…anything. I didn’t called them Mr. And Mrs. {insert my friend’s last name here} and I certainly wasn’t raised to have the chutzpah to call them by their first names, so I just sort of looked in their general direction when I had to speak to them and hope and pray and cross my extremities that they’d realize I was addressing them directly.
(This, incidentally, was exactly how I dealt with the whole what to call my in-laws problem until I had kids and now they are conveniently Saba and Safta, because that’s what my kids call them.)
But it’s not only the wifi passwords that have changed since I was a kid. It’s the relationships we have with the generation after us. My friends’ parents seemed much older, more sophisticated, and certainly less able to relate to me. They listened to different music (oldies!), talked about things I didn’t understand (politics!), and really didn’t care even a tiny bit about New Kids on the Block.
They were only one generation removed, but at the time we felt worlds apart.
My teenager borrows clothes from my closet, my son begs me to play Madden football with him, and my tween and I have been sharing this one particular pair of UGGS for this entire winter season. My daughter sends me snapchats and my children’s friends follow me on Instagram. These kids love when I take their photos, talk to me about TV shows and movies, ask for lip gloss recommendations, and they read my blog regularly.
We are only one generation removed too, but somehow it feels like less. The generational gap seems smaller, if you will.
I feel younger than my parents’ generation, and my kids’ friends seem older than I was as a kid.
It would never feel right if they called me Mrs. Martell. In fact, I insist that they call me Ali. Or Miss Ali, if they wish. But this is ME. It’s how I feel; it’s where my comfort level lies. Yes, my children’s friends aren’t my friends per se, but I do feel like I have a relationship and connection with them and it’s much more informal than what they’d have with a Mrs. Martell.
It is disrespectful, though, to allow my kids to call other adults by their first names? Should they address them as Mr. or Mrs. and wait to possibly be corrected? Is it different with adults who are considered family friends or should it be the same across the board? It is regional? I have heard some children use the term uncle or aunt to refer to adults who are neither their uncles or their aunts, but are clearly not formal enough to be addressed as Mr. or Mrs.
What do you think—are there rules? How do you like children to address you? And how do you teach your children to address adults?
