Name That Grown-Up

My pal Marjorie, writing over at Chocolate and Peanut Butter, asks the question: how should your child's friends or friends' children address you?

Personally, I detest the practice of children calling adults by their given names on the grounds that children should not be overly familiar with adults but instead should maintain a degree of respectful formality. The major exception that comes to mind is the case of very close non-family connections - God-children and/or children of long-time friends - who may address me as "Uncle Robbo" or "Uncle Llama". But for ordinary friends of the Llama-ettes, it's strictly "Mr. Llama" for me or, if I actually know the kid, "Mr. L" will do. (I believe that the Missus' class at school generally refers to her as "Mrs. L".)

I've also been called "Llama-ette's Dad" by some of their little friends, which I don't mind, especially as it is only the younger ones who do this.

Conversely, we do not encourage the Llama-ettes to familiarity with other adults, but instead instruct them to address grown ups as "Mr., Mrs. or Ms. So-and-So". We do this even when other adults have invited the girls to address them by their first names. To my knowledge, this has never caused trouble with anybody else, almost all of whom have respected our wishes to preserve this particular formality, even when they don't actually approve of it themselves. The sole minor exception that I can think of regarding this practice has to do with a pair of women at church, one of whom runs the youth programs and the other of whom does a lot of musical work with the kids. They are uniformely known as "Miss Lisa" and "Miss Ashley". I don't interfere with this practice.

As an aside, it is only when she is really trying to bait me that my seven year old starts calling me "Robert".