IDK, this response might be pretty good? The LW's attitude sucks in several ways, but... Katie's needs aren't being met. The parents being oblivious about fancy outfits and failing to compliment her when she looks nice, or to notice, is not perhaps such a big issue - it could be the kind of thing they never quite manage to improve, even if they earnestly want to, and it probably won't do much damage. My ADHD mom also never got reliable about sending thank you notes, and I don't think failing to thank your own parents who frequently take a caretaker role for doing some caring for your kids is all that serious. Like, I don't think anyone in my mom's close extended family would even get butthurt about that, so it doesn't seem like a good sign to me that this LW did.
... But making sure the a child goes out bathed and in clean clothes at age 7 is kind of a minimum, IMO.
If they let her pick her own clothes, or style her own hair, that's fine, but she's not old enough to be responsible for her own hygiene or her own laundry. She'll survive that problem too - and one of my sister's childhood friends did, as well as growing up in a pigsty with two literal absent-minded professors. But it still looks like inadequate parenting to me and I wouldn't be confident that it won't do harm. I don't think that having clean clothes and a clean body for your children is too much to ask, really, no matter how absent-minded someone is: you can figure out ways to remind yourself of these, after all, fairly basic tasks. Maybe the parents need some therapy, or an intervention, or a book on time management or something.
Also the last paragraph sounds a bit worse, although it might be misrepresented by the LW's bias. I mean, yelling at a kid for something that was your fault is really bad, but if they did it because they forgot that it was their fault actually but then they apologized once they realized it's not all that big a deal. Forgetting to register for aftercare and having to scramble for babysitters, well... that's mostly their own problem, except that LW is choosing to help.
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... But making sure the a child goes out bathed and in clean clothes at age 7 is kind of a minimum, IMO.
If they let her pick her own clothes, or style her own hair, that's fine, but she's not old enough to be responsible for her own hygiene or her own laundry. She'll survive that problem too - and one of my sister's childhood friends did, as well as growing up in a pigsty with two literal absent-minded professors. But it still looks like inadequate parenting to me and I wouldn't be confident that it won't do harm. I don't think that having clean clothes and a clean body for your children is too much to ask, really, no matter how absent-minded someone is: you can figure out ways to remind yourself of these, after all, fairly basic tasks. Maybe the parents need some therapy, or an intervention, or a book on time management or something.
Also the last paragraph sounds a bit worse, although it might be misrepresented by the LW's bias. I mean, yelling at a kid for something that was your fault is really bad, but if they did it because they forgot that it was their fault actually but then they apologized once they realized it's not all that big a deal. Forgetting to register for aftercare and having to scramble for babysitters, well... that's mostly their own problem, except that LW is choosing to help.