It was niece's birthday last week. I was at her grandma's (my mum) house
when my niece was picked up from school. She responded to my greeting of
"hello" then proceeded to go through a few of the plastic bags that were
lying on the floor in the living room. When they yielded nothing, she moved
on into the kitchen and proceeded to do the same. When that yielded nothing
yet again (her present was in Matt's nappy bag so not easily found) she came
back to the living room and started to play on the floor while sneaking
expectant looks at me.

When she sat down in the living room, I got up, went to the nappy bag, took
out the present, said "happy birthday" and handed over the present. My niece
just took it. No "thank you", no "kiss my a$$", nothing. Just took it and
unwrapped it. It was exactly what she had asked for for months on end (male
Bratz doll, took me weeks to find one as they seem to have been off the
market in Sydney for a while and finally I found one a couple of weeks ago)
and had been talking of nothing for weeks but of her hope to get one of
these. When she actually gets one, there's not even a grunt of appreciation,
she just puts the box down without opening it and continues to play with
whatever she had been holding beforehand.

All this took about a minute so it's not like I was holding out on her or
torturing her by not thrusting a present at her the moment she walked
through the door. So I wasn't expecting this level of resentment when I
actually gave her the present!

Am I being unreasonable in thinking that a kid turning 7 years old would be
expected to say "thank you"? I'm not asking for a great outpouring of
emotion and exclamations of "you got me my heart's desire and I will love
you forever for this" or for her to go dancing around the room pronouncing
my greatness. I just kind of thought she'd say "thank you"... At what age do
kids normally learn the social norm of thanking people for gifts?

Engram

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Matthew 21 June 2005
DD EDD 06 Oct 2006

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