Many people have two voices. One is the voice they use for business and social friends, family members who are perceived as peers, and strangers with whom they rub shoulders. The second voice is reserved for two classes of individuals, toddlers and older people.

A clerical employee in a doctor’s office where I go occasionally addresses older people with this second voice. Recently, a friend of mine in her early 80s complained that a sales person in a store had called her “sweetie.”

“Every time I run into that woman, it’s not just what she says. It’s her humiliating tone,” one of my fellow patients complained. “She says, ‘Hi, sweetie. How [sic] you? You’re looking so purty this morning.’ She not only greeted me in that tone of voice we all use for 2-year olds, what she said was offensive. Anybody knows that nobody my age is pretty. She talks down to me.”

These two people, the sales associate and the medical secretary probably, meant no offense. But they both made the same mistake. They forgot that the elderly person standing before them was a paying customer and their peer.

The two-voice approach can overtake us all. A few days after my friend complained of being called “sweetie” by a stranger, I caught myself using the same insensitive tone. As I fed an infirm relative her lunch, bite by agonizingly slow bite, I heard myself saying in a saccharin voice, “There you go, sweetie,” as I steadied her glass of water. I suddenly realized that as a caregiver, I, too, needed to guard against the two-voice issue.

Why do we do it? Someone said that it is hard to see the graces of the young in the old, and most care receivers are elderly. We caregivers may find it difficult to realize that the shrunken, awkward form before us is the same person who was a track star, a talented musician, a young mother, or an astute businessman. But if you and I as caregivers have an ounce of professionalism, it is part of our task to see and respect that young, vital person who still lingers within the worn body and to address him or her with the deserved deference.

Perhaps one way to provide a more accurate image of our care receiver is to find a few pictures of the person from childhood, from school, perhaps a wedding picture, or photos from significant professional milestones. Mount and label them to create a small poster. Display it prominently in the care receiver’s room for all to see. Then the person is no longer just a disease lying in a bed. He or she becomes a whole human being who deserves our full respect.

Martha Evans Sparks graduated from the University of Kentucky where she majored in journalism. She has master’s degrees in experimental psychology and in library science. She has written four books, one concerning dyslexia and the other three about various phases of caregiving. Check out Martha’s Journal and her books on caregiving on the web at www.martha-evans-sparks.com

Watch for Martha’s fifth book, Raising Your Children’s Children: Help for Grandparents Raising Grandkids, available wherever books are sold after March 1, 2011.