Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I was taught to address adults by their title and last name. Examples: Miss Smith (my first grade teacher) and Mr. and Mrs. Green (next door neighbors).
I’ve noticed over the past few years children of friends addressing adults by their first name and the adults don’t seem to question it.
Is this the custom nowadays?
I don’t see it as being the custom … but I live in the Bible Belt. I can’t speak for California or the East Coast.
It is passable, where I grew up, for children to call familiar adults by their title and FIRST name (Mr. Joe, Mrs. Dot, etc.).
I am totally against allowing children to address adults as contemporaries. However, when my daughter addresses a friend as, say, “Mrs. Henderson,” the common response is “Oh no, that’s my mother in law! Just call me Donna!”
I hate that. It sounds phony and contrived on the part of the adult in question, and I do not allow my daughter to speak to grown-ups that way. If an adult insists on a first-name basis, my daughter will address her as “Miss Donna.” I have not yet figured out a way to tell other adults that I don’t like it when their children call me by my first name, though. I just attempt a shocked facial expression.
I don’t mind if kids call me by my first name. I must say though that I grew up calling people Mr & Mrs and their last name and to this day I can’t call them anything else as it feels wrong to use their first name yet I feel like a dork calling them Mr & Mrs too sigh
tanookie - you may feel like a dork, but I assure you, the older persons you are addressing think you are a fine, upstanding, respectful young person. It’s OK to be a dork. Honest.
When I was a kid, I disliked it when adults asked me to call them by their first names. I cringed when they insisted.
But Lifeonwry… while that’s fine now… when I’m 50 how will it seem?
FTR I’m 30 … stuck in the “well I’m not a kid that’s for sure… but I’m still new at being an adult!” stage 
Children call me by my first name. So what?
Won’t matter. They’ll all be dead or deaf anyway.
Seriously, though, why would YOUR age make a difference in the degree of respect you accord to those still older than you?
I hate when kids call me by my first name. I’m nearly 50 - I don’t need a 6-y/o buddy. I don’t mind being called Miss Michelle. One of my daughter’s friends always calls me Mommy - silly, but I have no prob with that. Once you can vote and hold down a real job, you’re my social equal, but until then, I prefer you to err on the side of old fashioned courtesy.
I still call my old neighbors Miss Barbara and Mr. Jack - they’re in their late 60s/early 70s and since we’re not contemporaries, I give them that courtesy. Unfortunately, they still call me by my childhood nickname - a name I stopped using 30 years ago! Ah well… they’re old.
Because I wonder when I will be accorded the respect of being an adult too…
I probably feel this way because there is no rule for this. I would like to think that after time the kids that call me Mrs. would grow up and I would become me eventually. There wasn’t a lot of formality in my family growing up and it was confusing when I was to call some people by their first names and others by their last.
When I gave birth to my daughter 2 years ago, I was sitting in our hospital room at shift change. The new nurse came in to introduce herself and called me Mrs. K! I was so shocked I actually said “ack, no one calls me that. It makes me sound like somebody’s mother!”
FTR, I am 24 years old, and I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I never ever ever ever called adults by an honorific when I was a kid. I addressed my friends’ parents by their first names, and they addressed my parents by their first names. One of my best friends even called her own parents by their first names, which I thought was weird. At the first elementary school I attended (public school in San Francisco), we called our teachers and administration by their first names. When I was eight, my family moved to the suburbs and I had to call my teachers Mr. and Mrs. I knew what they meant, of course, I had seen them in books, but I thought it was pretty bizarre, and I remember wondering when the teachers would let us drop the formality and call them by their first names.
When I was at university (UC Santa Cruz) we addressed our professors by their first names as well. Of course, that’s Santa Cruz, where they regularly have to make announcements to address the pernicious rumor that UCSC is a “clothing-optional campus.”
Occasionally, my coworkers bring their kids to the office, and they have been instructed to call me “Miss Kyla,” which I find hilariously old-fashioned.
Maybe I’m just a rude hippy child who was raised in the back woods, but myself and many of the kids I grew up with would even call our teachers by their first names, and not out of any sort of rebellion.
I think of myself as having been a pretty observant kid though, and I can remember many times changing my habits around people who were uncomfortable with that level of familiarity. It was pretty obvious that the conversation would go much better if I just did what they were more comfortable with.
Call me a cameleon…call me wishy-washy…my child mind just thought of it as the same general idea as speaking up when talking to my friend’s grandma who had a faulty hearing aid…or not cussing in front of the born-again neighbors’ kids (even though my parents didn’t give a rat’s ass if I cussed 
) Not everyone is comfortable with the same things…adjust as necessary. shrug
I find it disrespectful for ANYONE to call ANYONE else by a first name unless permission is granted. I tend to excuse children more simply because they are less aware of customs. To this day, I find the concept of Mrs. vs Miss vs Ms. to be annoying. How the hell am I supposed to know whether or not someone is married? And what the hell does Ms. mean, anyway? My mom insists on being called Ms. I can’t figure out why.
That being said, I prefer to be called simply by my last name…no Mr. in front of it. By children, I prefer to be called a nickname of some sort. My nephew calls me “Uncah Bwyan”. It’s cute, but get’s annoying. He can say it twenty times in under a second and does so often. However, with the child on such a famliar basis, I’d feel absurd if he called me Mr. bjohn13 every time he wanted to address me. For one, I don’t think he’ll be able to actually say my last name for quite some time…imagine the trouble he’d have with my mother. She’s known as “Otra Mama” by my nephew, which is actually much easier to say then her actual (maiden) last name…let alone with an unpronouncable “ms.” in front of it.
I personally feel that the custom of children being forced to use such formal addresses is an absurd one except in a position of authority (such as a teacher or a police officer). If some child I don’t know adresses me in such a formal manner, I’ll immediately correct him/her (as I do with most adults). I am in no position to discipline someone else’s kids.
My rule of thumb would be-Mr. or Mrs. So and So unless said adult says otherwise.
I think we should call people what they want to be called. (For example, if an adult wants to be called by his or her first name-who am I to argue? I think it’s wrong of me to insist my kids call them by something they don’t want to be called).
I’m 16, so I guess I am still a child.
I call all my friends’ parents by their first name, except for my best friend’s father, who is always Mr. Bob, even to his own family. Absolutely everyone calls him that.
However, that is only because I have known my friends’ parents for a long time. If I meet someone new, I usually call them Mr. Smith or whatever, but they usually say, “Oh, call me Jim,” so I do.
Both of my parents insist on being called by their first name. My mother especially, because she kept her maiden name, and she says that it’s her mother’s name, so call her by her own name, please. This has thrown several of my friends for a loop, but they’ve gotten used to it now.
My teachers are always Mr. or Mrs. to their faces, but just by their last name when it’s just me and my friends. The one exception to this was my geometry teacher last year, who insisted on being called Dr. Joe.
Um, that’s the point. If you’re not sure someone is married or not, you use “Ms.” “Ms.” is a term that simply connotates “woman”, regardless of her marital status.
In the UK children call adults by their first names, or sometimes ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunty’ if they are very close family friends. Teachers are called by their surnames though (except in a few progressive schools), and it’s always a big game to try to find out the teacher’s first name. However, when I was with my daughter in Florida last year, staying with a friend there, she wanted my daughter (then aged 3) to call her Miss Anne. My daughter couldn’t cope with it, and eventually we compromised with Aunty Anne, though she called my friend’s Dad Mr Paul and seemed to like the novelty.
I would rather people didn’t call me Mrs. I know they’re just trying to be polite, defaulting to the ‘preferred’ state of marriage, but I am happily unmarried and would even prefer Miss over Mrs. However, I’m too old for Miss so Ms it is.
When I was in hospital after I had my daughter, the policy was to call all the new mothers ‘Mrs [Whatever],’ regardless of her marital staus. I was in there for eight days and the staff knew me well and definitely knew I was single, yet they still stuck to the erroneous title even after I asked them not to.
I should just go back to my PhD and be a Dr. and sidestep all this Ms/Mrs business! (Bet the hospital staff would still have called me Mrs though).
Not my age so much, but the things that come along with age. I grew up calling my parent’s friends “Mr” or “Mrs”. That was fine when I was ten. Now I’m 39, and my parents’ friends are members of the same church groups my husband and I belong to , my husband bowls with a bunch of the men and I see the some of the women at school events, since their grandchildren and my kids attend the same school. It would be a little ridiculous for me and their children to call each other’s parents “Mr & Mrs” when our contemporaries call them by their first names. Now, if we all didn’t belong to the same parish, I’d probably still be calling them “Mr & Mrs” - but I also wouldn’t have seen them between ages 12 and 24 (my wedding) and from then until my parents 50th anniversary (ten years from now).
I tell all the kids I meet to call me by first name. I don’t feel like a "mister’. If I were a teacher or worked with children in some other capacity I would be insistent on the more formal address. But I don’t, so I don’t. 