Modern Manners RE AL SIMPLE’S E TIQUE T T E E XPERT, C ATHERINE NE WMAN, OFFER S HER BE ST ADVICE
At a child’s birthday party I went to recently, there were preprinted thank-you notes in each goody bag. I always thought thank-you notes should include a nice mention of the gift, which obviously isn’t possible with a generic card. My own child’s party is coming up, and I’m tempted to take the easy route with the preprinted cards, but is it proper? C.L.
Generic, preprinted thank-you notes are not proper from an etiquette standpoint. And from a gratitudebuilding one, they’re not right either. I say this as a person who has shepherded my children through the writing of hundreds of thank-you notes during their gift-getting lives. In other words, I understand that you’d rather be getting a root canal than trying to extract gratitude (18 times over) from your son. But it’s important. A thank-you note says, “I’m grateful for the time you took to come to my party and for the care you took in selecting this gift for me.” These are sentiments that cannot be meaningfully expressed in advance. Nor will your child reap the rewards that way—and, according to psychologists, the benefits of gratitude are numerous, including better social skills, a higher degree of empathy, and even greater life satisfaction overall. Make it more fun, if you can. Provide cute stationery and good snacks. Or make it less onerous—for example, if the writing itself is too great a burden for a young child,
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then let him dictate his thoughts to you. And feel free to take the easy route for other party details. Storebought cupcakes! E-mailed invitations! Prefilled goody bags! Shortcuts are OK for anything but the gratitude.
About Catherine The author of Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, Catherine Newman has shared her wisdom on matters ranging from family and friends to happiness and pickling in numerous publications. She gets advice from her husband and two opinionated children in Amherst, Massachusetts.
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When I stay overnight at someone’s house, I never know whether I should make up the bed the way I found it or remove the sheets and take them down to the laundry area the next morning. Any advice? J.M.
Ask your hosts. “How would you like me to leave the bed? Should I make it up or strip it?” They’ll probably say, “Oh, just leave it,” and that’s fine—you can. They might end up making it up with the same sheets, which is what we do when we don’t have time to wash them but don’t want to confront a stripped mattress every time we walk past the guest bed. Or they’ll strip it themselves, which is not an overly time-consuming task. (And they may not be sure at 8 o’clock on the morning of your departure what, exactly, their housekeeping plan is for the day.) The only time I follow a different course of action is when my hosts are older, if I’m worried that stretching sheets and blankets over the bed is too great a physical hardship. “I’m stuffing these sheets in your washer,” I might say. “Where are fresh ones I can make the bed with?” The more matter-of-fact you are about it, I’ve found, the better your chances of getting to be helpful.
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