As I’ve said before, I have lived with a number of families while I was growing up – my own family, four foster families and a couple of other families after that. Before my husband and I even had children, we would talk about the good, bad and ugly of raising our own offspring someday. Manners was one of the biggies that we agreed were required.
Fast-forward a few years to when we had children who walked and talked and knew the difference between right and wrong on their level. My kids always knew that we held hands anytime we went anywhere, be it the grocery store or to church. When you have four kids and only two hands, this was imperative. They knew that they had to be in car/booster seats while riding in an automobile. They knew they had to at least try the food on their plate before they were allowed to say they did not like it. They knew when we went shopping to look with their eyes and not with their hands.
But those manners that mattered to us? They didn’t always matter to the adults they encountered. I cannot even count the number of times that an adult would chastise me for making our kids say sir or ma’am. Right there, IN FRONT OF OUR KIDS! Oh yes, they did. And it happened just as much with our close-knit church crowd as it did with their teachers at school.
In proper southern fashion, our children learned to address adults as sir or ma’am. No exceptions unless it was a relative and then they had to put aunt or uncle in front of a first name. If they were speaking to peers, that’s another story – this is mainly with adults.
If it was someone they were to show even more respect to, such as a teacher, they were to add the proper salutation to the first or last name (adult’s preference) – such as Miss, Mr. Mrs. or Ms. No exceptions.
Gee, I still call the dad of one of my high school friends Mr. Sheldon – and we’re more than 30 years out of high school! Regardless of whether he’s asked me to call him by his first name or not, I just cannot do it. I was raised to show respect and that is the best way I can show it.
These past couple of weeks have really shown me that despite those adults who admonished us for the manners of our children did not have as much influence on them as the naysayer’s would have liked – and I honestly got tired of walking away from such people who reprimanded me like I was a child, for raising our children to have OUR definition of manners.
Anyway, these past few weeks have been eye-opening for our two oldest daughters in terms of using the manners that their parents not only taught them, but we still use today. Our oldest daughter is working at a church camp. She addresses her peers by their first names but she addresses her supervisors and directors as sir or ma’am. She has been asked, repeatedly, to not call them that – but, she refuses. She is showing them respect and if they don’t know or hadn’t learned the same manners, that’s not on our daughter’s shoulders. She continues to show them respect.
Then, our second eldest daughter went to a sleepover the other night – and once again, the adults asked her not to use the same manners but to be less formal. I am okay with a senior citizen asking one of our kids to call them the “grandparent” equivalent, as I continue to call a dear neighbor Nina as if I were one of her grand-kids (though she’s way too young to be my grandparent!). But when she kept calling the Mom of the house “Ms. Last Name”, the mom asked her to call her by her first name….hence, she became Ms. First Name. The mom didn’t care for that but our daughter has learned and showed her manners as she had been taught to do.
When I was a Girl Scout leader, my little Daisy’s, Brownies and Junior’s called me Ms. Tammy. Perfectly acceptable to me because I didn’t want them to confuse me with my mother-in-law (who also helped with my troop). If they called me Mrs. Harrison, I dealt with it but also helped them learn to call me Ms. Tammy.
Both my husband and myself have received lovely compliments from others about how well mannered and respectful our kids are, especially when we aren’t around them all the time. It does a heart good to know that our life lessons are paying off.
And to those who stuck their nose where their nose didn’t belong?
