WWYD - child with no manners

[Rainallnight]

DD’s best friend has no manners. They’re both 8 and a half.

We’ve had friend around for plenty of play dates and have done some days out etc. She literally never, ever says please or thank you, and just comes across as quite demanding in how she asks for things. No SEN that I’m aware of.

DD is no angel and sometimes needs prompting on manners but is generally pretty reliable, as I think kids should be at this age.

Friend’s mum has texted me thanking me for the most recent play date and asking some quite searching questions about her daughter’s behaviour, as well as saying she hopes her DD didn’t come across as rude or demanding.

What do I do? I’d never spontaneously offer feedback but she has asked. But criticising anyone’s child has never ended well.

YABU - don’t say a word
YANBU - tell her what how her DD behaves.

I think there's a vast chasm between insisting a child who really struggles with communicating uses please and thank you (which would be wrong) and emphasising these words are important with most children and presuming competence. Obviously it's a spectrum and everyone has to find their balance. It's not even necessarily manners, "please" is a lot easier to say than many things and demonstrates that they want something.

My daughter points and something and says "hey, look" and that means she wants it 😂 so even if "please" means "I want that thing" it just sounds more polite I guess. She has a speech delay and when people talk to her, I will answer giving a model to copy. Or I'll model it to myself. It's finally working and she will copy what I'm saying. Sometimes 😂 but she's gone from saying the odd word to stringing a few together so I'd rather have her hearing the whole thing even if she's not saying it.

Just to add as well, I worked in customer service and plenty of people I would consider polite without actually saying please and thank you. A smile and a hello, tell me what they want to order and we're all good. Plenty of arseholes passive aggressively saying p&Q's though.

OP, you have had plenty of good suggestions of how to word things, I hope whatever you say is taken the right way 🙂