Would you have prompted this kid, who isn't your own, to thank you for a gift, even in front of his parents?

“The grandson of a friend”
There is your problem. You are essentially a stranger.

We’re there not “To/From” tags on the presents?

No. It’s not like he had 50 presents. There were 5 or 6. The people who they were from were all present, except for one. The parents knew who each of the gifts were from, so I expected them to prompt him.
I don’t know about any one else, but I only put to/from tags on the bazillion Christmas presentsI buy that are are going to be scattered to the winds to half a dozen households before Christmas, to be tossed in with another bazillion presents from other people. Too many to keep track of.

I can only think that he took it for granted as it was his birthday party after all. Generally, the feeling of gratitude is not to be asked for. Isn’t it more pleasant to know that he likes your gift instead of the action of thanking you? After all, the feeling of making other people happy with our gifts is a lot more satisfying than their reciprocation.

I happened to experience such things but from some very shy little cousins of mine, I understand the situation, and perfectly ok to not thank me for gifts since we’re family. No, I will not prompt anyone to thank me, it’s their freedom to do/not do that, however, it will still please me if they do so.

I would just not buy good gifts to the child until he grows up.

I would not have said it in that manner. That carries a chastising tone, which puts him in a position where he bears the embarrassment of not having been taught to say thank you.

It would have gotten your point and been more friendly to have just said, “We hope you enjoy it.”

He doesn’t know you, yet you didn’t Identify it as being from you. Kid doesn’t know you, and if I were him, I would not have any interest in ever getting to know you.

What the hell were you doing at a ninth birthday party? If my grandparents invited their friends to my ninth birthday, I would have been righteously pissed at my parents and my grandparents. Nice birthday hanging out with people fifty years older than me.

The kid(if brought up correctly) should have blurted out a “thank you” upon opening each gift. I totally respected the fact that he may not have known each sender, but a plain and simple “thank you” after each unveiling would have sufficed. May I go as far as saying that a “thanks everyone for your gifts/ for coming” would have been ideal after he had opened them all. I don’t suppose he was surrounded by more than 10 people at that moment. Mmmm, don’t know, some things are just common courtesy and by the age of nine at least the bare basics should have been mastered. I certainly do not mean the kid should have been bowing incessantly like a Chinese slave, but just discreet acknowledgement would have shown a sweet, well brought up young man! Asking for too much?

Perhaps the kid is very shy. Perhaps he was overawed by having people he doesn’t know there. Perhaps he was overly excited by opening his presents. Maybe he’s got no manners. Perhaps he just forgot – he’s nine.

Nope. I just usually stop giving gifts to children who don’t seem grateful. Unless they are shy or are young toddlers they should’ve been taught to be grateful. My husband on the other hand is the type to say something to the kid and the parents. It’s not that we are looking to be the hero of the day. But a thank you for thinking of me is something that was taught to me and I taught to my children. No one in life is obligated to buy or give you anything for free and children should learn that early in life or they grow up ungrateful and feel entitled. Oh, and my husband would’ve said it ever time the kid forgot. He would’ve said. Who gave you that gift. And what do you say?

@Dutchess_III, I quite well know how you feel. All my adult life I’ve grumbled about people, especially kids, who don’t exhibit what my mom called “simple manners” and who adamantly taught me always to thank others verbally and/or with hand-written notes. I still religiously do both to this day.

That said, I do apprrciate many of the above perspectives—at least intellectually. But none of them really touches on the emotional aspect—that part I can’t always control, that nagging sense of hurt and disappointment at not hearing thank you from someone for whom I feel I’ve gone out of my way to please with a carefully chosen a gift. I’m better now than I used to be about not taking that personally, but a part of me still always does.

As to your question, I think I would not have said anything at the party because in the moment I would have felt it unproductive for either the child or his parent. Also, having been told so many times never to expect gratitude, I would have felt momentarily guilty for possibly sounding snarky or petty, at least in my own mind.

Nonetheless, I would have gone home feeling exactly the way you do—disappointed and yes, a bit angry.

As the mother, I would ask my daughter “Did you say thank you?”

However, I wouldn’t say to another child “You’re welcome” or drop any hints like that. I’d hope the child expresses some sort of gratitude to me, or to the group at the end, and if he didn’t, and if his parents didn’t remind him, I’d feel a little bit annoyed. Not to the point where I’d hold it against him forever, but just a tad annoyed. A younger kid, I’d expect he might forget but a 9 year old should either remember on their own or the parents should remind him and then he says it. I’d also wonder about the parents not prompting him.

No. I think training children to say “thank you”, especially when it is in a public moment like that, is dumping the unconscious (and conscious) stress and weirdness of social obligations on the kid, and trying to make a young kid responsible for the screwed up adult culture we have.

Kids that young haven’t learned the inauthentic ritual requirements of our robotic shame-based culture yet.

Unless I thought the kid was going to get worse from adults acting out more crap on the kid if he didn’t learn the survival technique of saying “thank you” automatically whenever given anything, on threat of shaming or worse. If I have to explain that, I try to do it in a sympathetic way that shows I’m an ally and not a scary shaming crazy adult. Not overtly, but just by my way of being about it.

Basically I’d just try to have an authentic connection with the kid as much as the kid was even open to relating to me, with no need for the official “thank you”, and relating to such as just the words, but the meaning being different and ok whatever it is. I don’t have it that offering something to a kid makes them beholden to give me anything at all. It’s a gift, not an ingratiation tactic.

I have never been to a birthday where the parents didn’t lead the way by saying, “Oh! Who is this present from? Tell so and so “thank you,” Jimmy!”

As for the demographics, his little sister (2 years) and brother (1 year) were there but the rest were adults. There were his parents, his grandparents (our friends) and his other grandmother and an uncle.

We’ve seen him enough that we weren’t strangers. His grandparents have him a lot.

I don’t see what not being a relative, or even if we were strangers, has to do with simple manners.

Not once did any of them prompt him to thank anyone. Not once did any of the adults thank anyone for coming.

I thought the absence of children his age was odd too. The whole thing was odd.

@Zaku, I agree with you about the screwed up adult culture and I totally see where you are coming from BUT it is this screwed up culture we are called on to live in, forced to upkeep and function as smoothly as possible in. So, the sooner the kid and any kid for that matter gets used to its workings and reqirements the better. Even on a fake/pretend level we need to be able to serve those wretched social obligations otherwise the margin is the next destination!

When my daughter was about 5, we were invited to someone’s house for a Christmas get together and there was an exchange of presents. One of the gifts my daughter received was a paid of Barbie socks. She opened it and said “boring!” I was mortified, but I played it off and exclaimed over the socks and the gift giver laughed. When we left, we went to my parents house and my adult sister was there. I told them about how my daughter said the socks were boring right in front of the hostess/gift giver. We then explained to her the other big rule of being a gift recipient: Even if you don’t like the gift, you have to pretend that you like it!

The funny part was she put the socks on that afternoon and they became her favorite pair of socks.

@Zaku: In the “screwed up adult culture” that we live in, however, if you’re not grateful for the gifts you receive, the majority of people will not give you gifts any more, and may feel resentful if they do.

@jca cute! Hope the lady who gave them to her saw her wearing them at a later stage! Hehehehe, out of the mouths of babes!

A few years ago I had a kid, (one of Rick’s grandkids, actually,) tell me that a present I gave him was stupid (it was a tin box of 64 different colored crayons) and why did I give that to him? We weren’t there when he opened it, and I have a feeling that his mother may have made those comments when he opened his present. She’s a few bricks short of a wall. She’s not so great in the manners department either.
He got a quick, hard lesson in manners that day.

Gosh. When I was a kid, 13 or so, we went to visit relatives in Texas. My Uncle Pat owned a hardware store. I had a horse, and he graciously gave me my choice of a beautiful halter from his store. I selected one. I waited, looking at him, then finally said, “Well, it’s not much good without a lead!” So he gave me one of those too.
He told my parents and I didn’t think I was gonna live through the next 10 minutes! But, I survived and went home with a brand new matching halter and lead.

I would prefer human spawn be taught to be honest, rather than to lie just to not hurt someone’s worthless ego over a gift that the giver either knew in advance would not go over well, or was too ignorant of the recipient’s preferences to pick an appropriate gift.

Saying, “Thank you,” isn’t a lie.

If you are not actually thankful, then yes, “thank you” IS a lie.

If you don’t appreciate the fact that someone went to the time and trouble to get something specifically for you, and you don’t feel any gratitude just for the act alone, then you’re just a selfish rude asshole and don’t deserve anything at all.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

How well do you know this child? How often have you met him before? Have you visited with him often? Why were you at his birthday party?

I don’t understand what how well he knows us has to do with saying “Thank you” for a gift. If a complete stranger does something nice, holds a door, or helps you with something, you aren’t expected to thank them?

But since that seems to be important to some people for some reason, I will tell you. We go visit his grandparents a couple times a month, more or less. An hour here, a couple hours there. Dinner sometimes. They live about 15 miles from here. He is often with them. He calls us Aunt Val and Uncle Rick. Gosh, I’ve known him since he was….5? They just invited us for that and for a barbque they were having later.
He is a bit odd in other ways, too. Not very well socialized, I guess. Yeah, no friends his own age were there.
I guess they invited us so there could be more people there for him.

He is a bit odd in other ways, too. Not very well socialized, I guess. Yeah, no friends his own age were there. I guess they invited us so there could be more people there for him.

And this is why I asked. Because I’m imagining an awkward nine-year-old child, whose grandparents have tried to do the right thing by inviting a bunch of adults to celebrate the kid’s birthday, when he would probably have preferred they had not. I can imagine him sitting there with a bunch of old people all staring at him while he opened these presents and just feeling awkward and wishing he was anywhere else. By the sound ot if, it was quite likely to have been excruciating for him.

Of course, his discomfort is much less important than his manners.

He didn’t seem to feel awkward. He seemed pretty excited, and impatient for the cake and presents. He kept walking by and eyeing them. All the “old” people were his family, and he considers us family. It’s not like we were a bunch of strangers.

His manners are more important than his discomfort? Would prompting him to say “Thank you” cause him to burst into tears and run to his room or something?

What does any of that scenerio you dreamed up have to do with the parent’s, or grand parent’s failure to prompt him to say thank you? And I do consider it their failure, more than the child’s.

Thanks for providing the additional details.

You and I grew up in an era where we were brought up to say “thank you” and to send thank-you notes. Sometimes this etiquette trickles down; sometimes not. Personally, I would give a 9 year-old a break, especially if there was no card attached. It seems like saying, “You’re welcome” without the child saying thank you first is sort of passive-aggressive. If I had been been there, it would have made me uncomfortable to that.

The background helps to explain why he might have behaved as he did and why his parents/grandparents might have let it ride. You said you have witnessed the child as a bit odd in other ways, too. Not very well socialized, I guess. Yeah, no friends his own age were there. I guess they invited us so there could be more people there for him.

So the kid is not good around people. He doesn’t have many friends. His grandparents are aware of this and so they’ve tried to ‘fix’ this lack by inviting their friends. If I was aware of this, and I had observed the child was socially awkward, I would have shown some empathy and not made a point of showing up his lack of etiquette. I’m all for good manners, but I’m also not going to try to publicly correct a kid for a small faux pas. Perhaps his parents were more focused on ensuring he continued to enjoy the experience than on whether he said thank you. You say on this occasion, rather than being awkward, he was showing excitement at receiving the presents. Perhaps you could have just accepted his obvious joy as his gratefulness for your present.

It sounds like maybe the grandparents did something (this “birthday dinner”) and it’s possibly separate from the real “birthday party.” It’s not uncommon for kids that I know of to have a real party with their friends invited, where the relatives may be present, as well, and then have a relative like the grandmother cook a “birthday dinner” at their house. My mom does that for my daughter. We have a regular party where kids come, and my parents come, too and then there will be something else at my parents’ house where a few other relatives come and maybe a neighbor will stop by for cake.

So the kid in @Dutchess_III scenario may very well have had another “real” party and this was just Grandma’s birthday dinner for him.

Also @Earthbound_Misfit made a good point too. If the kid really was socially awkward (and at this point, who knows, maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t), then if he was happy with the gifts, it’s all good. I do still think that the parents should have thanked you on his behalf, though. “Thank you for coming and thank you for Johny’s gift. He loves Legos!” “You’re welcome Mrs. Johny’s mom! Thank you so much for having us. We had a great time.”

Thanks all around!

Could be. But I do hope they remind him to thank everyone, and to call the person in the other state who sent him a present.

I think they should have thanked me on his behalf too, and within his earshot.

I agree @Dutchess_III. Even if the kid had whatever issues he had, the parent should have thanked you.

Learning the ritual is superficial. Learning to not feel like your authentic self expression is not welcome, is far more important and valuable. So is learning not to get baited into obligation by people giving you things or doing things for you. I think the superficial training can get in the way of the more valuable lessons.

Oh, also, I think it’d be good if adults realized that they are being patronizing and weird to think they need to teach children this for any reason other than adult discomfort. I mean, sure it’s perfectly appropriate to tell kids about the custom and niceness and general good idea of remembering to say that. That’s fine. But the “oh no! the child isn’t saying thank you! it needs to be taught!” is mostly adult silliness. I remember being five years old and there was no question of getting the idea of the social requirement. Instead I was struggling to express my gratitude authentically rather than in a forced way, and third-party adults saying I had to say thank you for every gift was basically just a weird stressful obstacle that made it pretty annoying and unpleasant and confusing. No human is going to age to adulthood never learning there’s a social expectation to say “thank you” because no adult spelled it out for them and told them there was something wrong if they ever failed to do so.

That is odd @Zaku, that you would struggle to make it sound authentic. Were you afraid you would get in trouble if you didn’t sound authentic or something? We’ve all been there when someone says, “Thank you,” and you can tell that, overall, they didn’t really like it! It’s still the right thing to do.

It’s a “Thank you,” for crying out loud.

Yeah it was odd. My parents were usually not weird about stuff, but they did say to be sure to say thank you for every present, which got weird when I was at Christmas with a bunch of cousins and had several gifts from Grandma and the parents were there looking at me but saying nothing, and I had to go over to Grandma after each single present and say thank you. I was having an internal struggle because I WAS thankful, and I was pretty sure she knew that. My Grandma was awesome and connected with all the kids really naturally – I could always just be myself with her and say heartfelt things, until then. Having to march over there are try to say something about each one was very weird and I didn’t get why exactly. I started to feel like there was something wrong with me – I didn’t know then that it was just that I was five and didn’t have a trained ability to say “thank you” as an automatic insincere thing. I was pretty sure it was coming across as fake, or I was carrying the weirdness of the rule over with me but not being able to say it. I felt like I was even starting to make her uncomfortable. Especially when it was like, uh oh, she also got me a striped shirt I kind of don’t like.

@Dutchess_III I still think you were wrong to shame the kid.

If you want to shame someone, scold the parents who did not teach him, or really, scold your friend who didn’t teach their kids or the grandkids.

You are not the kid’s parent or grandparent. Someone outside the family who did something like that to my kid would never be troubled by seeing the child ever again.

I’m sorry @Zaku. Man, I never expected the kid to go around the room like that, after each present. I felt a “Thank you gramma” from where they were sitting was sufficient, and another as they were leaving.

Most of the time my almost 3 year and 4¼ year old old grand daughters automatically say “Thank you” after you give them something. If they forget mom or dad reminds them. It’s not a bad habit to instill in a child.

I just asked a new question about this and other things that we teach kids:

http://www.fluther.com/193620/in-your-opinion-what-should-parents-try-to-teach-their-children/

@Zaku: I think having the kid go around the room and go up to people and thank them for the gift and say something personal about each gift is a bit much. A simple “thank you” in my opinion is good enough.

@jca Yeah. Though I was about five years old, and thinking back on it as an adult, I get now that my parents hadn’t meant for me to take it so seriously at all – they’d told me before to make sure I’d thanked everyone especially grandma for everything, and in hindsight I think I was overly preoccupied with what they’d said and was making it a much harder request than they meant it to be. Knowing what I now do about communication, I think they had a slight anxiety themselves about wishing I would behave well with Grandma, and I bet I picked up that vibe and took it on like it was a serious responsibility I needed to live up to. My take away then and now is that adults often have a very different idea of what they’re asking compared to how it occurs for the child. The information about manners (the way adults often talk about it, like they have this brilliant piece of information about saying thanks that a kid will never get by themselves, which is preposterous) was dirt simple, and it wasn’t a question of knowledge or obedience for me, but of struggling to understand how to express something earnestly while at the same time feeling a need to say something true and thankful about each thing. They were just asking me to say “thanks Grandma!” and maybe they just meant “thanks for everything” at the end, which was dirt easy to understand but very difficult to do authentically at that age, especially because I took it like I ought to be able to express myself and there was something wrong with me if I couldn’t do it well. And just for my own sake, I treasured my relationship with my Grandma and it was really upsetting me to think she could tell I was being fake with her in the way I was struggling to say something about each gift.

What adults often think kids need to be told, often lands in a completely different way than the adults think.

Ah, the things children bear in silence. It is so sad. Once my daughter and I were taking her daughter, who was 9 or 10 at the time, to Kaw lake for a formal camp out. Girlscouts or something. We just needed to drop her off. Her daughter was super excited.
We had the hardest time finding the place. It was off in the boonies around the lake. Tons of little dirt roads branching off here and there.
What should have been an hour trip took about 2½. We had to keep back tracking and starting over. Then we finally found it.
In hind sight my grand daughter was very quiet during that whole time. When we got there she said, “I didn’t think we were going to find it and we’d have to go home.”
I looked at her stricken, but now relieved little face, and my heart broke.
I said, “You should have said something, honey! We could have absolutely promised you we would find it.”

For those of you who say that acting gracious, and thanking people for things when you don’t mean it, what do you think of this?
The barbque consisted of preformed, all Angus beef hamburger patties that came in a box that our friend grilled.
Also had little smokies.
Also, chips and artichoke and spinach dip.

My husband liked the burgers. I did not. Not at all. To me they tasted like they were starting to spoil.
The store-bought dip was nasty.
So all I ate were some little Smokies and a few plain chips.

Should I have just gone out the door when I left without saying thank you for the food? Should I have been “honest”? Of course not. But if I wasn’t taught from a child to find the things to be grateful for in a situation (in this case, the work and time they put into it, and for thinking of it) how would I have learned it?

Yes, you should have. For the fact alone that they actually COULD have actually been spoilt, and by saying nothing, you risked food poisoning for everyone.
Also for giving the other a clear hint that the food is not good, and that next time, they might be more careful in their shopping.
By staying silent and pretending to like it, all you do is cementing a bad status quo.

I didn’t pretend to like it. I gave over half of it to their dogs. If they had actually asked me, I probably would have told them that it was “OK.”
I was thanking them for their hospitality. I understand that you don’t think that’s necessary.

Great, you poisoned their dogs.~

I always, always, always thank people for having me over. If it was the first time I was ever there, I may say something like “Thank you so much for having me. You have a great home” or “a beautiful home” or something like that. If I’ve been there before, I’ll say “thank you for having us!” I may add something like “I know it’s a lot of work” or “we had a great time.”

Exactly @jca! Of course we do that. It’s rude not to.

@chyna I gave most of it to that crazy blue heeler they have. Fingers crossed. ~

@Dutchess_III I think you’re making a false dilemma by limiting your options to extremes. Between fake and “honest” there is plain honest but not needlessly rude. e.g.

“Thanks for making food. I don’t mean to be ungrateful but I’m afraid that meat might be off, and I don’t like that kind of dip.”

As for finding things to be grateful for, that’s useful but when people don’t know to do that, I’m not sure it’s generally a matter of needing to have been told and/or trained and/or compelled to feel that way about it. I suspect that in particular that if instead of successfully exemplifying doing that in an unforced way, an adult insists that children take that approach, that it may tend to backfire and lead to other problems. Certainly I have met both children and adults that seem to be suffering because they think some way of being is right and are being all weird about it, denying their feelings, etc.

The fault for his lack of “thank you” should clearly be placed at the feet of the parents/grandparents and you acknowledge this. But you chose to try to humiliate him for it within earshot of everyone in the room.

How is that helpful to him in any way?

I think it was unnecessarily harsh for a child whom you know is socially awkward. You could have accomplished the same goal by later taking aside one of the parents or grandparents and asking them why they’ve chosen to not instill basic manners in him.

I’m a little confused @Zaku Were you suggesting that I say, ”“Thanks for making food. I don’t mean to be ungrateful but I’m afraid that meat might be off, and I don’t like that kind of dip.””?

@Zaku: I would never, ever tell the host that I don’t like what she’s serving. What is she supposed to say? Oh, let me go buy you something you may like? I’m so sorry you don’t like it? I would shut my mouth and eat something else. If worse comes to worse, I’d just eat when I go home.

I went to a friend’s house a few years ago, and she baked a cake for some people there who recently had birthdays. I was one of them. It was chocolate cake, which I don’t care for but how nice she baked a cake and did all this work cooking dinner for us. There were teen twins there who also had birthdays. One of the twins told he he doesn’t like that kind of cake. I was thinking obviously his mother never taught him not to say things like that. I just don’t see the point.

Right @jca? I was one of 7 or 8 people there. That, to me, is like saying “If I’m invited to a cook out again, check with me to make sure you’re serving stuff I like.”

I would say nothing. The kid didn’t know who it was from, how is he supposed to thank anyone?
and even of he knew, it’s the parents’ problem for not teaching him to be polite. I have no obligation to play someone else’s parent.

@Dutchess_III: “Give me a call and we’ll go over the menu to make sure I approve.” Haha

That’s why I was trying to figure out why @Zaku would suggest I say such a thing. I mean, that’s what it boils down to!

@Dutchess_III: I know. That’s crazy in my book.

Hey..but it’s being honest, right?!

What is crazy to me is this incessant fakeness.
fake politeness, fake smiles, fake everything.

If we went around being totally honest we’d probably have no friends and no job, i.e. “Your ass is getting bigger.” “Your new haircut is ugly.” “I saw your husband at Home Depot looking at the cashier’s ass.” “This job sucks and I can’t wait to find a new one.” “This shit you cooked is ok but my mom’s cooking is way better.”