Saturday, January 16, 2010

Thank You Notes

I was flipping through my blog reader this morning. I love every blog in my reader and believe me, there are so many of them that it's a full time job just keeping up with them. So I found one blog post in particular here that made me think about the topic of thank you notes.

She touched on a subject that I feel is really an important art form that seems to have been lost in our culture. Why is it lost? Is it no longer important for kids and adults to write thank you notes letting the person who picked out the gift, paid for it, wrapped it up, and shipped it off to know that you appreciated their effort?

It's a subject that comes to the forefront whenever my kids get gifts. They whine and complain about having to write the notes. I don't let them use the gift until they write it. I always wonder if they will continue when they become adults and don't have me hanging over them nagging them to do it.

In generally discussing the subject with friends and co-workers I find out that many people don't get thank you notes from the person receiving their gift and frankly don't expect to. That's sad to me. It's common courtesy and we should be passing this courtesy on to our children. And let's lead by example by showing them how important it is to write those thank you notes.

1 comment:

Marcia, Organising Queen said...

I am absolutely totally WITH you on this one.

I'm fanatical about sending thank-you notes even if I opened the gift when the person was there.

My babies are 7 months old and I did cards for each person at the baby showers. Another nice thing I do (which seems to mean so much to people) is I take pics of the babies all the time (obviously) and if they're wearing something someone else gave them, I email the pic with a short note - it takes seconds because I'm sorting and organising the pics anyway, but people love it! I even did this with non-cute stuff like bottles (look! she's using your bottle or the blanket you gave him :))