Anonymous wrote:We sent a birthday gift to SIL’s dd over a week ago and haven’t heard a peep about it. (Amazon used their trucks to deliver it and won’t give me any tracking history or a picture of it on their porch but said it was delivered.) DH thinks there is no way we can ask about it without seeming like we are rude and fishing for a thank you while simultaneously shaming her for not already offering one. (His family has a strong tradition of passive aggression and reading way too much negativity into a situation where there is none so he’s probably dead on that this is how any outreach would be interpreted by SIL.)

The only reason I’m particularly hung up on this is because my dd never received a birthday gift from my other SIL earlier this year, which was very unusual but we both agreed that as the recipient we couldn’t say “where’s the gift?” and it was incumbent upon SIL to send a “hope it arrived!” message to open the door for us to tell her nothing arrived this year. But here we are as the sender and I feel like I can’t say anything here either to confirm that it did arrive and they aren’t also sitting around thinking “that’s weird that they never sent a gift this year.”

Try to tactfully reach out? Or say nothing and add potentially missing birthday gifts to the weirdness of 2020?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We sent a birthday gift to SIL’s dd over a week ago and haven’t heard a peep about it. (Amazon used their trucks to deliver it and won’t give me any tracking history or a picture of it on their porch but said it was delivered.) DH thinks there is no way we can ask about it without seeming like we are rude and fishing for a thank you while simultaneously shaming her for not already offering one. (His family has a strong tradition of passive aggression and reading way too much negativity into a situation where there is none so he’s probably dead on that this is how any outreach would be interpreted by SIL.)

The only reason I’m particularly hung up on this is because my dd never received a birthday gift from my other SIL earlier this year, which was very unusual but we both agreed that as the recipient we couldn’t say “where’s the gift?” and it was incumbent upon SIL to send a “hope it arrived!” message to open the door for us to tell her nothing arrived this year. But here we are as the sender and I feel like I can’t say anything here either to confirm that it did arrive and they aren’t also sitting around thinking “that’s weird that they never sent a gift this year.”

Try to tactfully reach out? Or say nothing and add potentially missing birthday gifts to the weirdness of 2020?

So, your niece? I find it odd that you didn't refer to the child that way.

Anonymous wrote:Personally, I used to always reach out but that's because my SIL (and BIL) and their kids are rude and never acknowledge nor thank us for gifts. Now they send acknowledgements at some point (two months later in the case of a generous graduation gift this year). I'm over it and have told my husband that his family is 100% his responsibility now. I love buying people gifts and I used to enjoy searching for and buying things for them, but after years of silence I got tired of it and stopped. Now I think he sends gift cards at the last minute but I'm not sure because I don't care anymore.

Anonymous wrote:Can you "lie" and say that the Amazon screen has been stuck on "in transit" for a while now. Before you call and raise a stink with them, you want to see if it has been delivered? That has happened before to me for real.

That way, it comes from a place of "concern". There is nothing to raise as a stink because you aren't shaming them for not saying thank you. And since it was delivered that will prompt a " omg we have been so busy with online school and Tim's godmother testing positive for COVID it totally slipped through the cracks."

jsmith123 wrote:If you're sending gifts and not hearing anything about them, stop sending gifts.