what's in a vowel?

[woolymonkey]

Please help me say what I am!

I'm a British mother, in Britain and I have to sign up for Edmodo if I want any communication with the monkey school, a British comprehensive. To create an account, I must state my relationship to the monkey boys.  The options are:

Dad
Mom
Other

I am tempted to tick 'Other'.  What would you do?

For the record, I would be happy to call myself a mom if I was in the US.  But I'm not and nor are my kids, their school or their teachers.

And, yes, I realise this is pretty minor.  Not like the time when the county music service decided that, in order to organise trumpet and violin lessons for the monkey boys, they needed to know phone me and ask if either of them was adopted.  The only answer they got was a stunned silence and 'Why on earth would you need to know that to arrange music lessons?'  I don't know which box she ticked after that, but they've been having the lessons ever since and nobody's asked again.

Comments

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

It must be my age, but even the British English versions seem decidely over-familiar. What's wrong with 'Mother' and 'Father'?

It probably is my age - my default address to parents is still 'Mr/Ms', and my hackles go right up when called 'Kate' by a parent I've never met or talked to previously. I don't mind my students calling me by my first name, but they know me. (I'm an Austen woman at heart... whatever happened to Proper Introductions...)

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

It's so confusing! If I contact teachers as a parent, I'll always start with title and surname, but I'll sign off with my first and last names. After that, I take my cue from how they sign their reply, though I'll stick with Mr/Ms as my default if there's any doubt. On the whole, I like the use of first names, but it does seem odd that a teacher will be Fred to me, who he's never met, and Mr Bloggs to the monkey boys who see him daily.

An additional irony is that we're supposed to work out the teachers' email addresses from their names, but that's only possible if you know the first initial, and the only way to find that out is to ask the boys if they've managed to discover that teacher's first name--the one they're not supposed to use. To be honest, the monkey boys often don't seem sure about the first or last names of many of their teachers, especially in subjects where teachers rotate every few weeks. I've resorted to emailing the office with subject lines like 'Please forward to Maths teacher of Squirrelmonkey'.

I hope 6th form is a bit more personal.

[dorispossum.livejournal.com]

It is more personal, so I get really fed up with students who call me 'Miss' when they've spent six months debating the dark corners of human nature in my classroom. (Some are just too idle to bother remembering teachers' names - we live in cupboards after all - which is ironic given their sensitivity to the most minor mispronunciation of their own monikas, which they expect you to memorise within a week of their arrival.) I tell them if they want to be that formal, they can address me as 'Maam'...

Like you, I adapt to whatever level of formality parents initiate, but always initiate contact with the formalities. Once we've met, things tend to change, but like I said, Proper Introductions must be made.

And don't even get me started on cold callers who start with first names...