Ma'am and Sir

H has been using "ma'am" and "sir" a lot lately. I have super mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand. I figure it's one of those things like "please," "thank you," and "I'm sorry" that we've never forced her or B to say, but we've modeled it exponentially that we've got naturally courteous children (most of the time) that genuinely mean their words instead of parroting them because someone told them they have to (in which case all the "please," "thank yous," and "sorrys," mean, oh, nothing).

I know a lot of people teach their children to say "ma'am" and "sir" - especially in the south - because they believe it to be courteous and respectful. I said it often as a child, although I remember no one ever telling me to do so. I said it more as a teenager and adult when I found it fitting to the situation.

J says it often on the phone to his "superiors," and I know that H hears that. And I jokingly call her "ma'am" occassionally, and use "sir" sarcastically with J. And I think Daniel Tiger might say it on TV...

And although she's picked up on it naturally, something I'd typically rejoice in when it comes to the manners department, it still rubs me the wrong way.

Mostly because I know the history of those words. I know how they were used to separate people and classes. And my children are not inferior to anyone, nor should they ever feel so. I may be older and wiser (debatable), but I'm not better than my children (and neither is anyone else).

And so H addressing me, or anyone as such, feels strange.

Wrong, even.

I said J and I both have, and continue, to use it. But I just feel like that is so much different. We both fully understand the meaning and history of those words (and subsequently, J uses it much less frequently now than he did before I sat him down for a history lesson). We are able to both connect and disconnect those words to their true meaning.

H cannot.

For now I've just been ignoring her use of them. J flat out told her it wasn't necessary. I don't know.

As I said, on the one hand, she's come by it naturally, so I feel like it'd be wrong to discourage, but at the same time, I'm not sure I agree enough with it to encourage it either.