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Professional Pet Peeves:  Stop Calling Them Kiddos

7/30/2016

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I remember it distinctly.  My parents, in reference to their involvement in the church's Vacation School, expressed their distaste for calling the participants kids.  Kids are baby goats, you understand, and it is degrading to refer to children by such a derogatory term.

I get it.  I was a child myself.  To think that children could be labeled by the same name as a baby goat!  Just imagine.  Didn't those people understand that goats are noisy, filthy creatures that chew on everything in sight?

On second thought, that actually kind of explains things, doesn't it?

But now they've gone too far!  They're no longer calling children kids; now they're calling them kiddos.  And it doesn't make sense.  Why add the extra syllable?  It certainly doesn't save time to call them that, so I suspect that people are just trying to be cute...or should I say cutesy?

How do things like this spread?  My own children's teachers, from kindergarten to sixth grade, call them kiddos, and don't think I'm not tracking it.  How long will it last?  Into junior high?  High school?

I guess it could be more worser:  they could be calling them kiddies instead.

But again, I ask you, Why?  Why add the extra o?  Do we do that to other words?  We don't call them childos or boyos and girlos, do we?  Of course not.  Kiddos sounds more like a breakfast cereal of which mothers would disapprove.  Kid-Os cereal would most definitely have bits of chocolate and marshmallows.

You see, that's what we do to these students.  We give them sugar instead of vitamins.  I would much rather their own answers to me be robust and full of lasting energy, not empty fat.  Just think about it.  Words mean something, and if we're just saying it out of habit and to be silly and cute, that alone is good reason for cutting it out of our vocabulary.  How can we show more respect to our students?

At the same time, I hear teachers in videos calling their prodigies young scholars instead.  Honestly, I'd rather hear kiddo than young scholar.  It's not sugary, but it does seem forced.  Fake.  And it's sure to get some behind-the-back razzing from students.  Others refer to their four- and five-year-olds as kinders and ​littles, which is more than a little cutesy for my taste.

While we're at it, won't you please stop referring to your husbands as hubs on the Facebook.

What do you call your children?  Have you given it conscious thought?  Or do you do so strictly out of habit? 
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