@WaxOnFeckOff
From the OP:
Just occurred to me that DS will need one for uni. What’s everyone else’s child using or what would you recommend? Im particularly interested in:
This is not the way that someone talks about buying an adult (friend/family) a gift.
It reads very differently to:
"I'd like to buy my son a backpack as a gift when he starts university. Does anyone have any suggestions? What do you use yourselves?"
This is what lots of people have picked up on.
It's not just 'a simple request', it's the way it's worded and all of the assumptions that are embedded in that opening post. That's what people are picking up on. For example:
- 'Just occurred to me that he will need' - why? Why has it just occurred to HER, and not to her son? It's not a 'want', it's a 'need' - why is his mum thinking about the essential items, and not the person who's actually going?
- 'What's everyone else's child using?' - just bizarre. Firstly, they're not children. Secondly, the assumption that it's all the parents, rather than the adults themselves, who will be choosing this essential piece of equipment.
It reads like someone whose child is starting primary/secondary school. It's not how anyone should be talking about their adult son, assuming no special needs.
- 'I'm particularly interested in' - as if it's HER who will be using it. No sense at all that she is buying it for HIM.
The reason I've bothered to break it down like this (apart from the fact that I'm procrastinating and not doing my work) is that you keep saying I'm 'projecting' (me and the many, many others who've made the same point, apparently - all of us projecting away), and making out like the idea of buying a backpack, on its own, is a bizarre or wrong thing to do.
The OP's opening post is a dead giveaway that she is doing all of the thinking, planning and 'adulting' that her son should be doing for himself