Getting 5 year old to write lots of thank you cards... WWYD? AIBU?

[cloudlessbluesky]

I was brought up to write thank you cards whenever I got presents from relatives or friends of my parents. It was just the done thing in our house. I still write them after my birthday and Christmas, or any other time someone buys me a present.
I'm trying to bring up my son to do the same (and with good manners in general, something very lacking in most of his peers I've meet so far).
Trouble is, how on earth can I keep him motivated in writing about 20 (on average!) thank you cards to relatives? Writing out pretty much the same thing in each? I try to do it over a couple of weeks so he's not doing too many at once (very limited attention span). I just find it so draining, started them last night and it took almost an hour to get him to write "Dear X.. thank you very much for my present. Love from X".
Aaarrgh!
Any other parents find this stressful?

I felt the same as you butterflyze but I also didn’t start as young as 5 and certainly didn’t have to anything like as many as 20. And in fairness, we didn’t even have a landline let alone all the other modern methods of communication.

I’m also wondering how a child gets sent as many as 20 presents from people he won’t be seeing to thank in person. As OP has not been back, I guess we’ll never know.

Am ancient. Days following Christmas and my birthday were blighted by the task of writing thank you letters hanging over me.

I actually think it's brilliant that you're getting him to do this. A thank you text from you is meaningless to him, whereas time spent writing a note is time spent appreciating someone's generosity.
Is it the actual writing that he's struggling with? Perhaps he writes "Dear X, from x" and you add "thanks for my present".
Or would he find it easier to draw? He could draw a picture of the present, write his name and you write thank you.
Well done for awesome manners!

A thank you text from you is meaningless to him, whereas time spent writing a note is time spent appreciating someone's generosity.

As the 3 posts immediately prior to yours indicate, it really isn’t.

Reception teacher here - have a memory that I think of often. Child in my class was made to write out 30 invitations for his party and then 30 thank you notes to his friends. In school, he always avoided writing and never enjoyed it. He left our primary school last year and still hated writing.
Print a generic thank you note and get your child to add a quick drawing if necessary.

Just dont

If he did it easily and willingly that's one thing, but given he took an HOUR to write one it's not fair.

Would you want to spend 20 hours writing thank you cards?

Also as pp have pointed out, some SEN making things like this very challenging may not have been identified at this age.

A thank you text from you is meaningless to him, whereas time spent writing a note is time spent appreciating someone's generosity.
If a child is having to be pushed into doing it, the parent is finding it hard work trying to get heir child to do it, I doubt the process is an exercise in appreciating generosity.
Why is a written card that's been dragged out of a young child deemed to be more appreciative and more grateful than a simple thank you phone call?
Why is it considered manners to force a young child to write 20 cards, when a thank you phone call is perfectly polite?

It all seems to come down to some parents wanting other people to congratulate them on their parenting.

We would do this. Ask him what he'd like to say, write that part. He wrote the name of person and his name. Again mainly for elder generation but phone calls to my siblings.

I usually send a video/photo of them playing with the present and say thank you.

There are much more efficient and environmentally friendly ways of saying thank you these days.

This must be a troll...

@Dojacatpaws

We write out a gold embossed card with a delicate water colour painting of said child with gift

Can't believe it isn't at least an oil painting. We always buy a thank you gift instead of a card - just something small like a Fabergé egg or a modest tiara.

Thank you letters, do you make him write it using a quill and ink under candlelight, it's the 21st century, ring the people who gave the presents and stick him on the phone for a second. I've never once in my life written a thank you letter, I normally just said thank you when I was given the gift or opened it.

I brought my children up to say thank you to people in person, or if that's not possible,to phone or message but I never made them write cards.
But then I don't send cards of any description, apart from a few Christmas cards to elderly friends and relatives who live long way away. Waste of money and bad for the environment. I keep our recycling boxes in the porch and any cards received go direct from postbox to recycling.

You just need to change the way you do it. I printed out birthday photos on postcards. Printed a message underneath and all my children had to do was write their name and put xxxxx. As they grew older I expected more, the recipient's name. When about 8, same photocard but a copied sentence, just thank you for my ..... It's good to get children used to thanking people, and present givers like it too.

My DS have always written Thank You letters for presents, when not given in person. This means they didn't send them after a birthday party, for example, because they could say Thank You on the spot. They never had 20 to turn out, I can see that would be a lot for very young children. But it's an essential habit/life skill, and doesn't have to be War and Peace- a couple of sentences will do the trick at their age. I would also allow the odd spelling error or crossing-out, as young children may find it demoralising to have to keep starting again after a mistake- and I think a more natural letter has greater charm. I have a Godson, 11, who never sends a Thank You. His mother sends me a WhatsApp on his behalf "Thank you for G's present: he loves it" , and I have no sense at all of whether he even knew he had received a gift from me. So I'd say, keep your standards high. It's a chore now, but gets easier and forms really good habits.