Daughter branded as rude by another parent for not saying thank you when given a lift

[interestingdays]

My daughter's friend (both aged 8) told her that her mum thinks she's rude because she didnt say please or thank you when giving her a lift, recently. My daughter is generally v polite and manners are important to us. Does make me cross to think shes been judged and I'm straining not to send a message to say how upsetting it is to hear she's being branded as rude. My daughter is usually v polite but didnt know the mum and this was a new 'friend'. She may just have been v shy and uncertain.

Did you OP thank the mum?

Fuck sake!

Getting offended by a minor lapse from a young child is pathetic.

Nobody knows if this mum DID get offended. Nobody knows the context. Nobody knows the conversation she had with her child.

You’re all fucking mad!

Well the friend's mum has every right to consider your dd rude and she mentioned it to her own dd not your dd. That said, even the politest children sometimes forget to say please/thank you. If I were you I would tell your dd to make sure to apologise for not thanking the mum for a lift the next time she sees her.

Or she could write a thank you for the lift message on a card to give to the friend to pass on to the mum. That would fix the faux pas and have the passive aggressive advantage of being both excessively polite and subtly informing the mum that her comment had reached you

Just thinking back to an experience when I was about eight- we’d moved and I’d just started at a new school. I went through some double doors in a corridor and didn’t hold them open for a teacher that was walking behind me (I didn’t realise she was there). She knew I was new as it was a tiny school, and she said ‘That was very rude. At THIS school, we hold doors open for other people’. I felt about an inch tall. Of course there was no problem with her telling me that I should have held the door open (and I did know that, in general, I genuinely hadn’t realised she was there. As an adult you usually glance round to check I guess, but I was in a new school and EIGHT!), but she could have done it in a much nicer way.

She had manners in abundance, but hadn’t been taught to be kind, which is a much bigger failing in my opinion.

She hasn't branded her anything! She probably said something along the lines 'x never says thank you for the lift. Make sure you remember, it sounds rude not to'

I went out of my way to give a lift to children when there was a family crisis in their home.
They never said thank you when they got out of the car.
It is rude.
Children need to be taught manners.
So many parents don't bother.

People are really fucking weird about rudeness, not just on MN either. Like when people train babies to say 'ta' so much that they start saying it whenever they want something.

Ironically, some of the people who are the most concerned about manners and perceived rudeness are the rudest people I've ever met. But they probably think the same about me. Oh well.

I do love the passive aggressive thank you card idea though. Like the ones she makes in Trolls. Don't forget the glitter.

Yes, you should text the mum, but to say thank you for the lift!

I think at age 8 I would be making allowances for shyness

@beanaseireann

I went out of my way to give a lift to children when there was a family crisis in their home.
They never said thank you when they got out of the car.
It is rude.

WTF?! Poor kids have had a family crisis at home and you're miffed that you didn't get a thank you?!

@Lizzie3869 you’re right, things have evened out now.
But it still is very irritating when OPs disappear and don’t engage with comments. I mean some threads get totally derailed and hijacked so the OP understandably bows out, but in normal circumstances it’s good to hear an update from the OP.

Whilst I agree that it's annoying when OPs abandon their threads, I can see why the OP of this one wouldn't want to engage with the many of the petty minded people calling her daughter rude.

Well, I think people might be less assumptive and aggressive and actually ask?

It's not up to others to tease out your true feelings. You put a post up and people will comment on it.

Sakura7

But they didn’t do that. They commented on things I had not said. IOW, they assumed.

honeygirlz It was ongoing and they just never said thank you on the many occasions I helped out.

She was rude. If you send the Mum a message now you'll look absolutely mental, stay out of it and tell your daughter to say thanks in future no matter how shy she is.

Those people who think their own 8yo always says please and thank you in all circumstances because of your amazing parenting: you are completely deluded. 8yos (even those whose parents that think manners are the most important thing in the world) are still a work in progress and ALL of them forget their ps and qs sometimes, especially under stressful or unexpected situations.

The mum was bonkers, just like many people on this thread.

@likeafishneedsabike

True, it can be irritating, but why let it bother you? If you want an OP to engage, maybe tone down the negative comments? There's no need for the pile on, where posters literally repeat what's been said before, sometimes without thinking, I suspect.

It wasn't as if her DD was massively rude, as is clear from the response on here. And the friend's mum was very passive aggressive, I would never comment on the behaviour of one of my DDs' friends in front of them.

Yanbu. Your dd is 8. 8. 8. 8. Just in case people missed it I'll say again. 8. I'd wager most 8 year olds wouldn't even think about saying thank you for another parent picking them up. Not that they are rude, they dont realise it's a favour for them (technically it's a favour for the op so as long as she expressed gratitude I dont see the problem).

Two things

I) it was rude of your DD not to thank the person giving her a lift. STOP protecting her solely because she's your child
Ii) it was unbelievably petty of them to draw your attention to this.

Whatever happened to sarcastic comments?

“e're talking about an 8 year old. Some of the responses on this thread (from people who are hopefully possibly older than 8) are rude and really fucking nasty.

This ^

She's a young child FFS, she may have just forgotten or been preoccupied getting out of the car. I'd be far more judgemental of a grown adult getting their knickers in a twist about this.”

Alllllll of this

The mum is far ruder slagging a child off in front of her friend tbh and she doesn’t have the excuse of only being 8

I’d be really passagg and send a text saying how both you and your dd massively appreciated the lift thank you so much and how distraught and mortified you both feel now that you realise she was too shy/forgot to say thank you

If this incident is a teachable moment for your dd to remember her thank yous, it should also be a teachable moment for the woman regarding saying shady shit about little children where it could get back to them.

Wow, no one here seems to have a shy child. She's only 8, for heaven's sake, cut her some slack. Sure, you can expect an 8 year old to be polite, but it isn't like she actually said something rude or unkind. I think it's harsh to judge a child for forgetting to say thank you - she was probably distracted by collecting her things, saying goodbye, unbuckling her seatbelt, finding the door handle, etc. And we all know that parents are pretty invisible when kids are with their friends. She is still learning social skills, like all 8 year olds, and this kind of smack-down is not going to help her. I say the child may not have shown gold standard manners but her "friend" and her "friend"'s mum have been actively unkind to another child, knowingly causing her upset and embarrassment, and that is worse than forgetting to say thank you.

Ellen, neither of my dc are shy, but my son in particular has this very very very close friendship with his best pal where they just adore each other so much that when they’re together the rest of the world doesn’t really exist 😁😭 they’ve been besties for 6 years now (they’re 9) and have had countless sleepovers, teas at each other’s house etc and both me and the other lad’s parents always always always have to remind them to say thank you at the end of things because they’re too preoccupied doing weird high fives or giving each other the heimlich manoeuvre or whatever weird way they’re currently obsessed with saying good bye to one another

It happens 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think it’s another one of those things (like politely asking if anyone can do you a childcare favour if you reciprocate/bring younger sibling to soft play party if you pay for them) that normal ppl think absolutely nothing of but that has mners SWOONING with disgust and baying for blood

I really don't get why some posters are arguing that an 8 year old not saying thank you after being dropped off home isn't rude. It is rude, as in rude being the opposite of polite.

Is it a big deal? Of course not and most likely the mum didn't make it so? She might have just said 'that was a rude of your friend not to say thank you before closing the door, remember guys that if someone pick you up/drop you off, it's important to show your appreciation and say thank you' and that was the end of it. Of for all we know, her DD said 'X is normally very polite but she is a bit shy with people she doesn't know well' and the mum might have responded 'oh that's OK, it happens, I'm sure she'll say it next time'.