She needs to let this one go.
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Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
There’s a way to go before Christmas, but yesterday my wife, “Rose,” said she doesn’t want to get our grandkids (ages 8 and 10) anything this year.
Her reason? They never write thank-you notes. The kids always thank us in person or on the phone, so it’s not like they are a couple of ungrateful brats. Rose has always been on the prissy side: She grew up well-off and was raised very formally. What can I do to convince her that writing thank-you notes has gone the way of 8-tracks?
—Gratitude Doesn’t Require Written Evidence!
Dear Written Evidence,
Well, you’ve come to the wrong person for confirmation that thank-you notes are hopelessly old-fashioned. I like thank-you notes, even now. I taught my daughter to write them (and, at 33, she still does). We do not have to shed every gentle, thoughtful practice of the past.
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That said: Your wife is being unreasonable. As noted, I like a thank-you note. I was touched and delighted by—and very grateful for—every end-of-semester/post-graduation/post-letter-of-recommendation-season thank-you note a student wrote to me in my nearly four decades of university teaching. I always appreciate a note of thanks for a gift I’ve given, or a good deed I’ve done. But I do not demand them.
While I do expect to be thanked for gifts given, I don’t require that the thank-you arrives in the mail. An in-person thanks is great. A thank-you text: Just fine! A phone call? Bring it on. As long as the recipient doesn’t take my gift for granted, I would never withhold further gifts. And, frankly, to expect written thank-you notes from children who may not have been taught to write them (who almost certainly were not taught to write them, as many people now in their 20s, 30s, and 40s were not) is absurd. It would be cruel of Rose to punish her grandchildren for not thanking her in the precise way she prefers to be thanked. (Now, I do know some children—and some adults, too—who never say thank-you in any format. But that is another problem altogether.)
Tell Grandma to ease up on the kids. Get them Christmas presents this year and every year. If it’s really important to her that the grandkids learn that written and mailed thank-you notes “are a thing,” then she had better make sure she writes them to the kids when a gift is given to her that’s signed from them and their parents—or when they’ve come to visit, say, and their grandmother has had a lovely time with them … or when you and Rose visit their home, and they were gracious hosts … or for any reason at all that Rose can think of. She can even write, along with that expression of thanks, “I always so enjoy receiving a handwritten note! Don’t you? I hope so!”
—Michelle, grateful that you’re taking the time to read my column today
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