AIBU to find a letter from school addressed to Mr and Mrs offensive?

[SunnyBaudelaire]

or am I being over sensitive?

DD enrolled in D of E and since then I get endless mail, from a teacher at the school who is in charge of it. The last one was addressed to ,
'Mr and Mrs Baudelaire'.

Right there never has been a Mr Baudelaire as I did not change my name on marriage. Anyway we are divorced now and he has nothing to do with us.

The school's contact details would make this quite clear, plus we have had enough meetings with the school over the years for this to be known!
DD is now in year 11. REally I am hoping to let off steam here and not send a vitriolic message to the school!

AIBU? It is the assumptions that annoy me.

well in this day and age goodbyetoallthat, perhaps you should revise your 'baseline assumption' do you not think?

I don't blame you for being upset and it's the kind of lazy thinking that leaves no room for modern families to feel 'normal'.

But you don't have to be mean about asking them to correct it (unless they keep doing it afterwards!).

The Parent/Carer thing is the only way to go but that does upset lots of people, what with not treating them as individuals - I kid you not.

As does asking for "Johnny's mum" when you have to phone home. It really isn't clear on the contact forms. Lot's of children have different surnames to at least one of their parents, many mothers don't specify Miss/Mrs/Ms, using first names doesn't seem right. As with so many things, a school can't get it right, whatever you do you're going to upset someone.

My old school used to address thing to Mr/s which they thought covered all bases, but doesn't address different surnames.

The DofE teacher probably doesn't have easy access to the contact information.

our school can't get my kids names right.
I didn't change my name upon marriage, so being very traditional (nicked a spanish tradition) gave our kids my surname as a middle name.

Despite never getting a single form with our kids names on double barreled they are certain that is their surname.

I forgive them as i can't get a single teachers name right, and i only have 8 to remember :)

Whatever, maybe some of you should try being a single mother for fifteen years or so, and then see how you feel getting crap like that through the post.

I CBA to get worked up over it. But I've only been a single mother for 9.5 years so what would I know.

DSs school usually get it right and correspondence generally comes addressed to me. Some is addressed to Mr & Mrs. Meh.

People can be so lazy and hard of thinking when it comes to anything beyond the old-fashioned Mr and Mrs even though many couples don't fit that bill any more.

We're busy moving house. Despite DH and I being married, I am not Mrs Lobeseder and we have different surnames. These details are clearly recorded on every document and bit of correspondence we fill in/send. And yet pretty much every letter we get back says Dear Mr and Mrs Lobeseder....

Gah!

she doesnt need it though, parent/carer of is just fine, as the schools normally do....

The school should be more careful and it's probably worth pointing it out to them. But I wouldn't be all upset about it. Unless you think they were using it to make you feel bad about yourself on purpose. Somehow I doubt it.

The school have 'used' the wrong information. They are supposed to keep and maintain accurate records. They have failed in that. YANBU.
My groups all get standard letters that are 100% identical. If I have to write something specific then I check. It's very very basic admin.

Erm, I am a single mother, it still doesn't bother me.

our school can't get my kids names right.

Please make sure they are correct for their exam certificates!

no of course they are not dro!
but yes I think they should be more careful!
Their dad is a complete loser who doesnt pay for them and doesnt see them.
WHy the fuck is my mail addressed to .... someone they assume is him!

Hmmm, as outcomes for children being raised in a home where there are a married couple in the parenting role are consistently shown to be better than any other family set up, I have to agree that this should be the assumed default.

Just because divorce and singe parent families are so common these days, that doesn't mean that we should accept and normalise it.

I get that this is not a popular view on MN though.

really Battery and what are the outcomes for children raised by a brainless mum?

I think you're overreacting, although it should not be beyond the ability of a school to keep a record of parents and to use this to do a mail merge.

I am always being addressed as Mrs G by school when I am actually Ms C (the children are little Gs). I've never corrected them because I don't care.

Oh let it go. Really there's actually real things to get offended about and this isn't.

Like other posters have said all letters from our primary school come addressed to the parents/guardians of xxxxxxx, same as letters from the Health Centre re pre school vaccinations and the like.

I get that this is not a popular view on MN though.

It's not that it's unpopular, it's that it is a twattish view. HTH.

OK thanks everyone, I feel better now.
Other than comments from BatteryHen which just confirm my fears.

Just because divorce and singe parent families are so common these days, that doesn't mean that we should accept and normalise it.

I don't think beliefs concerning what the ideal family set up is should come in to it. Being correct is important, especially for official documentation.

It could be that the teacher doing the D of E has no access to the school records and has to keep the D of E correspondence separate/do it themselves. I don't get how they would have got to inventing a Mr Baudelaire, but probably best to write to the teacher and ask them to adjust the records.

BatteryHen are you saying that it is fine for teachers to assume I am part of a married couple, even though I am not, because that situation would be better for the children?
I think I have heard it all now.

I work with families and if I used the assumption that parents were Mr & Mrs child's surname I would be wrong about 80% of the time.
It is just courteous and professional to address people correctly. I'd be annoyed too.
There is also ( intentionally or not) a whiff of judgement about it.
Not the same thing but it puts me in mind of the maternity wards years ago all the women were addressed as Mrs, its a bit passive aggressive.

I wouldn't be upset, I'd be angry though, if their attention to detail is so slapdash on something as easily as getting parents' names right then what else are they not bothering to look up?

This kind of poor organisation is why I missed getting entered for one GCSE, was entered at the wrong level for another, and never did get my certificate for a third - paperwork just got mis-filed, or mis-spelled (I have a short surname.. it still gets frequently mis-spelled, and my first name has a few common spellings, and I'm completely used to correcting that).

What else has a fictional father's name entered on it? It doesn't matter here, but what if there's some permissions slip somewhere which requires 2 parent's signatures now because that's what the computer says?

Minutiae don't matter until you find yourself at the bank counter having ID being demanded for a name you've never used in your life because just these types of assumptions have been made!

Battery don't be so bloody stupid and offensive. So because you feel statistics suggest that marriage is good, we should promote it by refusing to acknowledge any other possibility in the way we address envelopes?

I bet there are some widows who would really enjoy the consequences of that logic! 'Yes, we know Mr X is dead, Mrs X, but you see it is actually best for children to be raised by two parents, and we really want to make it our first assumption that they are being.'