I cannot relate to either the dilemma or the answer

[conuly]

DEAR HARRIETTE: My neighbor has been cleaning out her closet. She has given a few great pieces of clothing to my teenage daughter, who acts like she couldn’t care less. She has accepted them, but hasn’t even tried them on and is nonchalant about the whole thing. I can tell that my neighbor wants to know if the clothes fit. I have taught my daughter to have good manners, but she’s not showing them now. How can I get her to behave better? -- Etiquette

DEAR ETIQUETTE: Your daughter may feel traumatized by being sequestered at home for so long. Even though your neighbor is being kind, chances are, your daughter isn’t really connecting to what’s happening.

You have to wake her up, so to speak. Remind her that even during times like these, good manners count. She may wish that the person paying attention to her is one of her good friends, but she needs to acknowledge the one who is being kind to her. Take away a privilege, if necessary, to get her to respond. If you confiscate her phone until she tries on the clothes and thanks your neighbor, I’d wager the gratitude will come pretty quickly. Be gentle with her, too, as this is a weird time, especially for a teenager who longs for her contemporaries.

https://www.uexpress.com/sense-and-sensitivity/2020/6/8/man-has-hard-time-keeping-in

Comments

[conuly]

1. Unless your neighbor has actually asked if the clothes fit, then no, you cannot "tell" that the neighbor is dying to know this information. Personally, once I hand clothes off to somebody else, I no longer care about the clothes even a little bit. Not one bit! And if I passed them off to a kid via the parent then I certainly don't delude myself into thinking that the kid was ecstatic about them.

2. If LW or their kid said "thanks" upon receiving the gift, their manners obligation is completed and nothing more needs to be done. However, if they didn't, then they need to say thank you. Good manners does not require that LW's daughter actually tries on the clothes, because Neighbor is certainly not peeking in the window watching. A thank you is sufficient, and if LW accepted on Daughter's behalf then LW is the proper one to give the thanks and should have already done so.

3. This advice is bizarre and also the worst. LW's daughter isn't refusing to try on the clothes because of covid-19 or ingratitude, she's just not interested in them. Taking away a privilege rather than simply giving the neighbor a thank you and possibly a little white lie about how much Daughter appreciates the gift is ridiculous (again, especially if it was LW who accepted the clothes and Daughter didn't have much choice in the matter).

3a. But if you're going to take away privileges, taking away the phone when your kid can't see their friends in person is actually cruel. Don't do this.

[ashbet]

^^^^All of this!!

If some random adult had "cleaned out their closet" and given me clothing as a teenager, I would have politely thanked them, but the odds that they would have been my style would have been extremely low (unless said neighbor was Stevie Nicks, and even then, they wouldn't have fit!)

A thank-you is ABSOLUTELY enough from a teenager given an unsolicited gift of used clothing. Leave the poor girl alone, and definitely do not take her phone!

[jadelennox]

In fact, this happened to me multiple times in my adolescence, and it sucks when people a generation apart from yours give you nice hand me downs and you have a social obligation to take them. I spent too much of my childhood in velour v-necks, y'all.


This isn't a gift from a neighbor, it's someone throwing out garbage in a way that makes her feel virtuous.

[dine]

so much this!

one thing that also struck me is just who is judging "a few great pieces of clothing"? because if the neighbor is over 20-25, I'm guessing her style and a teen girl's may differ greatly.

[conuly]

They might not. My nieces have filled their closet with the same clothes their mom and I stole from our mother when we were teens. 1960s and 1970s fashion never dies, it seems....

[kelly_holden]

My maternal grandmother gave me a few pieces of clothing over the years, and while I loved her dearly, I didn't like many of them. Our colouring and taste in colours was just too different. And that's before, as you say, one even gets into that these 'great pieces' might look like old lady clothes to a teenage girl.

[naath]

If I were the neighbour I'd just be happy the things were out of my house...

[welcomingsong]

Ditto! I have a firm position that hand me downs are not a something for which someone needs to feel and act grateful, until proven otherwise. This situation falls clearly into my default category of “Why on earth do you even think she wants that? She’s doing you a favour by taking these things away when thrift stores are closed and there’s nowhere else to dump them but the dump (which just reopened where I live).”

[shirou]

Well said. I think if LW accepted the clothes on daughter's behalf, the daughter should still say thank you when she next sees the neighbor. But still, a thank you is all that's required. Confiscating the daughter's phone!? Wtf Harriette.

[rosefox]

Take away her phone? WTF?!

[conuly]

Over a "problem" that probably exists only in LW's mind, and that if it doesn't could be solved by judiciously shaping the truth a little.

[rosefox]

And there's no logic to the response at all! "Your teenager is traumatized. Be gentle to her in this difficult time. I'm sure she misses her friends. Take her phone away until you've shamed her into being polite to a neighbor she shouldn't even be seeing because of social distancing." It boggles the mind.

[cereta]

I'm trying to reconcile this Harriette with the one who counsels people to gently accept truly atrocious behavior.

[conuly]

Does she counsel parents to accept that atrocious behavior from their kids, or the other way around?

[lavendertook]

Geez--she is a teenager! They are taught by their peers and the media that their whole standing in the world consists on how they dress according to the current teenage fashion. Unless you've taught her from a young age to resist labels and the stupidity of the mainstream culture and its shallowness, and she is comfortable with that teaching which will cause her to be maligned by her peers, leave her the hell alone.

It's like giving a professional geologist a rock you found on your hike and expecting her to put it in the center of her prized rock collection.

What's a great piece of clothing to you, is likely not to fit your daughter's fashion sense, precisely because it is great to you--teenagers need to define themselves apart from their parents. She didn't choose the clothes, she didn't ask for them, she may be sensitive about hand-me-downs, and she's not the one who has a relationship with the neighbor like you do. Tell the neighbor, "she hasn't looked too interested in them yet--you know how teenagers are--they have to choose their own time to be interested in what an adult gives them. I'll let you know if she comes around and tries them. If she doesn't soon, would you like them back?"

Why is Harriet such a controlling dip? Why did someone think it was a good idea to give her an advice column?

[lemonsharks]

That is ... Not my experience of teenagers, either those I know or my memory of having been one.

(Or geologists. Most I've encountered are very happy to receive a neat rock, both for the specimen's sake and the gesture's sake.)

[lavendertook]

I was a teenager in the 70's and early 80's in a small working/middle class mostly white town in southern NJ and the Philly suburbs, and i was the kid who wore clothes my mom made me and got picked on a lot for it and disdained that crap, so that was my impression of my teenage peers, and the media often confirmed it, and I couldn't wait to escape from that town and it's people.

But since escaping, I've gotten the impression that a lot of US small town and middle and working class suburbs, especially but not exclusively white ones were similar and I think Millennials and Gen Z may be different than us Xers, who aren't that different than the boomers except for our tendency toward sarcasm and making do. I would love to be wrong.

I'm glad you have dealt with courteous folk who are geologists, but that wasn't my point at all. I may not have stated it very well, but I don't feel like trying to explain it better, so will leave it at this impasse.

[cereta]

There are so many things wrong with this that I'm just going to focus on the discordance between bringing up the possible social and emotional effects of isolation on the kid and then suggesting taking away what is probably her primary means of connecting to other people right now. I've hesitated to take away electronics as a punishment for actual problem behavior right now because without them, my kid pretty much sees me and her father most days (and barely him), so it's a lot bigger deal than taking them away during a normal school week. For something like this? Good gravy.

[cynthia1960]

+10000

[ambyr]

Well, that escalated quickly.

Even if this is a problem, which I'm not convinced it is, I am boggled that both LW and Harriette seem to have skipped the simple step of . . . talking. Is "Hey, daughter, I know you don't care for those clothes, but can you just try them on so I can tell [neighbor] if they fit or not?" so hard to say?

If Harriette is going to tie this to current events, I will too: as the authority figure, your goal is deescalation, not leaping into the encounter with disproportionate force.

[minoanmiss]

what the everflipping flip.

[xenacryst]

If you confiscate her phone until she tries on the clothes and thanks your neighbor, I’d wager the gratitude will come pretty quickly.

Here, let me fix that for you:

If you confiscate her phone until she tries on the clothes and thanks your neighbor, I'd wager that the fake gratitude to appease the situation will come quickly and the knowledge that her parent is a petty manipulator will fade slowly, if ever.

[cynthia1960]

Word.