‘Elderspeak’ grates on seniors’ nerves

Re: Don’t make assumptions based on my ethnicity, May 18

Thank you, Alison Mah, for the article about the annoying greeting to which you are subjected, based solely on your ethnicity. I’ll be even more careful from now on. Thank you for pointing this out so clearly.

There are similar issues with age-related greetings.

These “harmless interactions” such as “dear,” “sweetie” and “love” cause me to cringe, but others just shrug them off because they know the speaker means no harm.

Nevertheless, these terms of endearment by doctors, nurses, dentists and all types of servers, cashiers and airline attendants are discriminating and isolating.

Yet we who are victims of them are supposed to accept it with grace and appreciation!

I have tried various ways to object, including one memorable time on WestJet. The attendant asked me, “What would you like, dear?” I replied that I would like to be called “madam” and that I would also like a black coffee, please.

When she was finished the coffee service she came back to berate me in such a loud voice while viciously wagging her finger in my face that she alerted several rows in front and behind me, telling me all the while that I had no right to correct her.

On another occasion on Air Canada, my husband objected to me being called “dear” and asked for “madam” (after he’d been called “sir”). The attendant said she had a PhD and should be called “doctor.”

An equally inappropriate address is to be called “miss” at the age of 72 and obviously a married woman, as is evidenced by the wedding ring. It has been about 60 years since I was appropriately called “miss.”

The use of terms of endearment, as this practice is called, is referred to as “elderspeak.” Studies show the more “elderspeak” is used, the more infantile the behaviour becomes from those to whom it is directed in hospitals, senior homes, etc.

“Elderspeak” is a way to distance the elderly from the main population, reminding them they are in the off-ramp of life while the other is still in the fast lane. It helps those still in the fast lane push away the inevitability of death and the reality that they, too, will age.

Eileen Howell, Ottawa