To ask my children to write thank you letters?

[millimat]

DD (14) and DS (12) both have late January birthdays so they tend to write a combined thank you letter for birthday and Christmas presents for everybody who have them something. They're whinging saying nobody else ever writes them. AIBU to expect them to write them?

Also it’s very wasteful and awful for the environment - goes in the bin after a day

@petbear at my elite private school we were reminded every term to write thank you cards for prizes that we received-you clearly don't know the upper class as well as you think. It's not about caring about getting an acknowledgment-it's about being embarrassed of you fail to say a proper thank you. It's ungracious-obviously.

If I gave my young relative a £10 present I would be Very pissed off if their parent forced them to waste £3 of it buying a card and stamp to send back to me. What a waste of my gift.

petbear

I can’t decide if you are sarcastic, bitter or just plain angry.
I think writing letters IS a class thing and in my experience it’s pretty much the reverse of your description.

Petbear-if you were to make your DCs write them how many times would the word ‘fucker’ have to be included?

If I gave my young relative a £10 present I would be Very pissed off if their parent forced them to waste £3 of it buying a card and stamp to send back to me. What a waste of my gift.

They would be ridiculously bad with money if they were spending that much per card.

I think I need to clarify. I don’t think writing letters is necessarily the thing to do if you’ve received a gift. HOWEVER. if you don’t even send a text or an email to acknowledge that gift then you are truly rude and entitled.

Just acknowledge the thought, ffs. That isn’t hard and a text costs pence, if anything.

If you can’t even be bothered to do that, you really do not deserve someone going out of their way to send you a gift.

PetBear Did you get the sack from CardFactory? You're so angry about thank you cards/letters ... I'm assuming you're one of the working class you seem to despise as you have time spare to rant about something so trivial.

My DCs have always been encouraged to write them, I feel it is important. I wouldn't mind too much if they sent a text /phone call but I prefer the notes

Whatever your view on thank you letters it is absolutely incorrect to state that it is "basic manners" to send a thank you letter.

Writing that shows a lack of "basic" understanding of the English language.

It is "basic manners" to express thanks.

The writing of a specific type of letter is etiquette.

Etiquette is a code of norms tied to social group. Manners are more basic and more widely agreed upon.

Evelyn you’re expressing your opinion as facts and making things up as you go along too.

OP I would get a pack of preprinted cards and let your kids sign them. I had to write thank you letters in my teens and really objected to the expectation that I did it whereas my brother didn’t bother but that was ok cos he was a boy.

Evelyn: Pedantry is never good manners.

OutyMcOutface: well said. Same here.

Crunched: why, thank you!

Ooh I've sparked a debate! I still think it is simply good manners to acknowledge a gift in writing. But maybe I will concede for this to be an email if it gets them done.

I'm as middle class as you get. Doesn't take long to write a quick note. I buy a pack of cards and pay for the stamp. I obv don't make dd buy those. Often a picture gets drawn in the card too. And yes I send thank you notes for my own gifts too

I’ve never received one or made anyone send one,as long as the person is thanked that’s good enough for me

I usually get mine to phone or text

At my scheme School we weren’t compelled to write thank you letters
Fortunately the teachers saw that pupils could aspire to more than anachronistic etiquette
Whereas it seems card writing was emphasised to the alumni of elite private schools

YANBU, being able to write a thank you letter is a great skill to have and will never go unappreciated by the recipient.

My two ar'e 10 and 12.
Both v dyslexic so i write the 'body' of it but they sign it etc.
I tell them if people can be bothered to send (even a £5 from great aunt) then we can return, even if its a postcard its still nice to put on mantelpiece and know your gift was appreciated.

They should absolutely write separate letters for Christmas and birthday. It's incredibly rude to the giver to conflate them. And the letters should be handwritten. Haven't got kids yet but will enforce this stringently when I do. My godchildren aren't yet old enough to write their own but I'll be pretty pissed off if they don't. Apart from anything else, it's a nice way to stay in touch.

Mine do selected people.

Grandparents, my sister (she insists and I see no harm), their non-religious g-dparents, one great aunt, DH siblings.

Once they hit 18 I bow out gracefully. It's up to them to decide. Although Father Christmas has been known to put thank you noteless in their stocking...

YABU. If they don't mean what they write, they are meaningless. Address the reason for their lack of gratitude than just forcing them to write the letters.

I don’t send cards at all, complete waste of resources and money.
I do however insist my kids say thank you for receiving a gift, they’re too young for phones/email so I txt the parent of the gift giver to say thanks if it’s from a school friend.
In 7 years of school parties (so probably well over 100 parties) we’ve only ever had 1 thank you card.

YANBU, we write thank you cards too.

DS writes thank you notes, he’s 5. They are age appropriate- he’s a slow writer and in year 1 so I found ones online where he just had to fill in the blanks- names and what the present was. He will keep on doing cards/ letters for quite some time. I expect when he’s a teenager he’ll do an email instead, that’s fine.
I still write thank yous and I’m 40! I do cards, emails or texts depending on the recipient.
If I don’t get a thank you - whether that’s just a text or a proper letter/ card, I stop buying for that person after a while!