The Guest was great, if you haven’t seen it.

I could understand it fine. Sounds like the Brits are annoyed with an American as the lead.

Does that actually say “Church of University”? To whom do they pray?

Between the camera work and background music, I kept waiting for the koala to tell me his current skin care routine and tips for a dewy, natural makeup look.

Look: I don’t want to start a fight (or, I guess, at this point continue one). I completely understand where you’re coming from vis-a-vis courtesy and a sense that an 18 year old shouldn’t take a free ride to college for granted.

Meant to say all or nothing.

dis·in·gen·u·ous

Advocating “all of nothing” is unhelpful.

I notice in your other comments that you focus a lot on the money aspect of things. Does that mean you think that if the daughter had paid her own way completely, she wouldn’t ever need to contact her parents?

This constant cry of “basic courtesy” is troubling. I don’t think that basic courtesy means that every single time someone contacts you, you owe them a reply. I think that’s a weird thing to put forward about women on a feminist website. By that logic, you owe every guy who contacts you via online dating a reply — and…

It’s not disingenuous — it’s a personal preference. I find having a lot of unanswered texts on my phone to be somewhat stressful because of a certain amount of social anxiety, but I hate constantly texting friends and family, because it’s not a medium I like.

I’ll repeat myself: if the mother has continued to text the daughter several times a week despite allegedly receiving no responses, how often do you think she’d be texting her if the daughter committed to reply to each and every one?

So is pestering people. I think that’s the disconnect we’re experiencing here. I understand trying to back the mom’s POV and suggest that maybe the daughter could be more responsive, but it’s clearly a communication problem on both sides. And the mom has shown that she’s been given feedback — even if it’s through the…

That line gave me a flavor of, “Fine then! I don’t want to be your friend anyway!” which is an odd vibe to get from a mom talking about her daughter.

A once a week check-in seems perfectly reasonable and polite. You want to hear how he’s doing, you want him to hear how you’re doing!

Here’s the other side of it, though: if the mother is being 100% honest and she sends several texts a week (by her own admission), some of them just being quick smilie faces, and her daughter doesn’t respond AT ALL (which seems unlikely, but let’s go with that), and that has continued for 2 months, what do you think…

But now the mother does know, and is accepting zero responsibility for texting during the day when her daughter is likely to be busy.

Adding: the phenomenon of more frequent communication is part of the problem, though. Back when kids had to pen a weekly letter, or line up at a phone booth, parents accepted limited contact. But just because the daughter *can* text her mom 24/7 doesn’t mean she needs to or needs to want to.

Counter-argument: if her Mother expected better manners, maybe she should’ve raised her daughter to have better manners.

If she didn’t expect responses, what is she asking for advice on with this letter?