To think that parents should send a quick individual thank you after kids birthday parties?

Genuinely my child does.

I tried to do this recently but my younger DC ripped the cards off the presents so I had no way of knowing which present was from which attendee.

Well, it takes a few seconds and is only a waste of time if you don’t value the interaction. Some will and some won’t.

No more of a waste of time than posting on mumsnet 🤣

What a waste of time though 😂

The most common thing here is along the lines of:

Thanks ever so much for bringing Johnny to Josh’s party and also for the jigsaw which Josh was delighted with.

You're very welcome, I’m glad he liked his gift. Thank you for the invite, Johnny really enjoyed himself and he loved his party bag too. Thanks!

I don’t understand what you want to achieve. You would feel better with an individual thank you? You would feel better knowing an adult supervised the gift unwrapping, wrote everything down, then sent you a generic thank you note saying thanks for the book, Jimmy loved it (he didn’t, he thought it was shite but I’ll tell you that anyway …) Because….. why? What does it change?

You need to check they were thankful/ grateful/ liked it? What is the purpose of this task?

i don’t give gifts to be thanked. I certainly don’t require a busy parent to be writing down forced messages of thanks ffs.

Yanbu.

I always send thanks to each parent or get DC to write a note.

Does anyone’s child genuinely write individual handwritten invitations to their birthday party?

Thank you at the time and child should write a short thank you note for each gift. Shouldn’t take any longer than the invitations

Precisely.

I always make sure DS is super grateful when receiving each gift and says thank you. But as a dyslexic child I am not going to force him to sit down for two hours or more of torture writing out individual thank you cards.

I also don’t think me sending individual text messages to parents is remotely the same. Therefore I rely on his friends and their parents trusting his heartfelt appreciation at the time the gifts are given.

That's exactly what I do. While kids are opening presents I write down who gave what andvthrn send the parents a message to day thanks. With neighbours I ask kids to write a thank you card mostly because I don't have all their numbers but also because it's a small contained number. I don't think you can expect young kids to write 20+ thank you cards. And also because I'm super grateful to my neighbours for always remembering to get the kids something. When we had birthday parties at home we used to invite them but now that the parties are at soft play or similar venues I don't. Anyway sorry bit of a tangent but yes, I do thank every parent individually by text. Some of dd's classmates' parents do the same and some don't. I don't think it's a must or that important but I like to do it and I tell my kids I do because I want them to learn to appreciate other people.

Tying yourself up in knots there

But surely it is acknowledged- doesn’t everyone write a thank you note to the host of the party? Why are good manners not prioritised?

Yep, the expectation is itself not great manners.

It depends on whether you give the gift out of kindness or because you are expecting a thank you. I am not bothered when someone tells me thank you verbally. They are showing appreciation at the time and that is showing good manners. Me expecting a personal note, message or call after that just screams that I want more affirmation and praise and is really not good manners is it? Being upset you didn't get a thank you is just as presumptuous and rude as the person not thanking you. You should be doing nice things and giving gifts because it is the kind thing to do, not for praise and thanks. That defeats the purpose entirely and is very self serving.

How old are your kids op?

A general thank you is manners. If that isn't good enough for someone over a child's birthday present which is often generic and/or from the 'birthday party drawer/cupboard' anyway then oh well.

So if it means nothing, then is it unnecessary to say thank you when you are handed over the present? Should you remain silent and only follow up with a message after you opened it? I wonder how well it would go down on MN 😀

i used to try to but I gave up because invariably some tags had fallen off and I had no idea who’d given them! Not wanting to embarrass myself I joined in the general thank you club.

That's why manners are in decline

We always did too

Because thanks means nothing if you haven't opened the present

In all fairness, if me not receiving tailored thank yous from 30 individual parents after their child’s birthday party means that I don’t have to do in return… then I’m happy with the trade off.

Not to embarrass people (size & duplication) and also so you can keep a list - for thank yous

Personally I always tried to thank parents individually after the party. But I know with some of the larger parties with say 30 kids this is more difficult