Clothing vent

[Think About It....]

All of the boys' underwear and socks are disappearing.  It's driving me nuts!  My youngest is literally down to two pairs of sock and three pairs of underwear.  This after I had just bought a whole new pack of each less than a month ago, because he had already lost most of them. 

When they all came back from the week they spent with their dad for Christmas break, they also arrived with a week's worth of dirty clothes.  Not once did he do laundry.  To me, that is ridiculous.  I know darn well he has to wash his own clothes.  Part of being a parent is doing their laundry.  It's not a big deal if it's a weekend, but a whole week?  Geez!

So they got back last night from their visit.  Half of their clothes are not with them.  Including S9's basketball uniform.  STBXH picked him up from practice, which is the only reason he even had the uniform.  S9's first game is tonight and now he might not get to play.  So I e-mailed the ex, simply asking if the kids could have possibly left a bag of clothes in his car.  He responds that they are still at his girlfriend's house, 2 hours from here.      He did offer to give me money to buy a pair of shorts, if that's OK with the coach.  But I am still the one who will have to take the time to go do this.  He did reassure me that he is going back up there tonight and will have them here tomorrow.  (That's a whole other story.  He can find the money to make a 2 hour commute several times a week, but claims he can only pay $66 a week to feed 4 kids.     Needless to say, we are going back to court over that one.)

Do you think it would be reasonable to only send the kids with shirts and pants for the next visit?  My thought is that they have plenty of socks and underwear up there already.  If not, he can go buy some.  I am already planning on insisting that any uniform needs to be dropped off at home prior to leaving.

[2bad2stay]

All of the boys' underwear and socks are disappearing.  It's driving me nuts!  My youngest is literally down to two pairs of sock and three pairs of underwear.  This after I had just bought a whole new pack of each less than a month ago, because he had already lost most of them. 

When they all came back from the week they spent with their dad for Christmas break, they also arrived with a week's worth of dirty clothes.  Not once did he do laundry.  To me, that is ridiculous.  I know darn well he has to wash his own clothes.  Part of being a parent is doing their laundry.  It's not a big deal if it's a weekend, but a whole week?  Geez!

So they got back last night from their visit.  Half of their clothes are not with them.  Including S9's basketball uniform.  STBXH picked him up from practice, which is the only reason he even had the uniform.  S9's first game is tonight and now he might not get to play.  So I e-mailed the ex, simply asking if the kids could have possibly left a bag of clothes in his car.  He responds that they are still at his girlfriend's house, 2 hours from here.      He did offer to give me money to buy a pair of shorts, if that's OK with the coach.  But I am still the one who will have to take the time to go do this.  He did reassure me that he is going back up there tonight and will have them here tomorrow.  (That's a whole other story.  He can find the money to make a 2 hour commute several times a week, but claims he can only pay $66 a week to feed 4 kids.     Needless to say, we are going back to court over that one.)

Do you think it would be reasonable to only send the kids with shirts and pants for the next visit?  My thought is that they have plenty of socks and underwear up there already.  If not, he can go buy some.  I am already planning on insisting that any uniform needs to be dropped off at home prior to leaving.

[laurena82]

Do you think it would be reasonable to only send the kids with shirts and pants for the next visit?  My thought is that they have plenty of socks and underwear up there already.

Yes, yes, yes...that is reasonable.  ESPECIALLY because he's even ADMITTED that he HAS these clothes.

Yes, IMO it's BS that a week's worth of clothes come back dirty...

SIGH...

There is SUCH a pattern...

My nonSO is the 'noncustodial" parent...when UBPDx would send clothes for the WEEKEND (fri night to sunday afternoon)...GUESS WHO WAS UP EARLY SUNDAY AM RUNNING THE WASHER/DRYER SO THAT HE WAS BRINGING ONLY CLEAN CLOTHES BACK TO HIS EXW?

yeah...the "non"...

but when the shoe's on the other foot, and it's the BPD as the "non custodial parent"...the clothes come back dirty or not at all...

PERHAPS you should call up my nonSO's UPBDxW and get some "raging" lessons from her on exactly how to instill the utter fear and terror of delivering unwashed clothes to the custodial parent/BPD? 



HERE"S A GOOD PLAN:

What she ALSO did, was send an ENTIRE GROCERY BAG full of clothes with child each weekend...but EVERY OUTFIT was at least two sizes too small...she even insisted SS change his clothes after school before going to visit dad...obviously, into one of the "too small" collection...!


Eventually, nonSO got tired of trying to squeeze SS into these clothes (and , mind you , at that time he was paying DOUBLE the FOC calculated amount of child support ...PLUS, these clothes were ALL "hand me downs" from older son...and she had PLENTY of LARGER hand me downs in her house...she just didnt send those along!...but that's a rant for another day  )...so eventually nonSO started buying clothes for SS to have at our place...for the past few years, he washes SS's "friday/arrival"clothes on saturday, and puts SS into them on sunday before driving him home.



(aside: he never said a word to UBPDexW about doing this...it went on about 6 months before she realized the "bag" of small clothes was being sent and returned weekly without being used, or even looked through...when she found out, she was LIVID that she had gone to "all this trouble" to send these clothes each weekend ...hah!  yeah, pick up that same bag of too small clothes and hand it to nonSO at pick up...alot of hard work!    )

BEST WISHES!

[nowwhat]

Oh, the clothing battle...what fun.

We get things back sized 10/12...he is in a 16.  Right now CB is angry with us but can't argue with us about it so we have gone back to the clothing battle.  Last time dh picked him up he was in sweats that were way too small and that we can't send him to school in.  Usually, we send him back to CB's in what he comes home in.

On the bright side, we have just replaced all of his jeans because of a growth spurt.  So that gives us a lot of clothing to exchange...then he will be wearing clothes only one size too small and a bit on the short side and we will accumulate all of the crap she purchased for him a couple years ago.

Anyhow, to solve this problem really means putting it on the kids.  I make my d list everything she takes to her father's on extended stay.  If they don't come back she gets in trouble (grounded from electronics). It resolved the issue on that end.

Oh, yeah...last extended stay for ss...he came back with a different jacket.  We bought a nice one from Penney's and he 'forgot it' at his grandfather's house.  How do you forget a jacket in the dead of winter?  CB stopped at Walmart and bought him a piece of junk to wear.  The other jacket is 'in the mail.'  I am sure that CB buys this crap (walmart and kmart) and probably points at us as buying it for her son...I can hear it now: see, they dress her d in much nicer clothing than they buy for my son.   

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[problemfamily]

We don't send a bag of clothing for extended stays because they have more clothes there than here. We let BioM figure out how to clothe them on her time.

DH also didn't budge on our recent clothing debacle. He had the kids take back the few items (never specified) that the kids thought she might be referring to. We didn't even send a whole suitcase worth back and she has never even commented on it again. After all the emails and threats. It's like she forgot she even made a fuss over it.

After our Christmas trip we sent the kids back to her in the clothes they wore to our house with the explanation "I'm not going to hear any more yelling by your mom about clothes" The kids seemed A-OK with the explanation.

As far as normal day to day, they wear clothes back and forth. They pick out their own clothes but if there is something special that we want at our house, we encourage them to leave it here as sometimes they have a hard time getting clothes from her. Apparently BioM goes in their rooms, gets their clothes and whenever she gets around to it (usually buying them new clothes in between) she refills all their drawers and closets. They have no idea what's in their room at any given time, it sounds like.

Sorry, I guess I had a clothing vent of my own.

[david]

My uBPDw ran away with our two boys a while ago. She cleaned the house out on her exit. EVERYTHING was gone. It took several weeks to locate my boys. Finally got court to get a schedule until hearing. My atty informed her atty that she had all the boys clothes. Of course she denied it and said that I took everything and just made it look like she dide it. Two hours before picking the boys up after not seeing them for at least three weeks I get a call from my atty receptionist. She told me that my uBPDw atty called and said her client confessed and that I would get some clothes when I picked the boys up. Half didn't fit and the rest pretty much needed to be thrown out. I went out and bought a shopping cart full of clothes at a Walmart. Then every time I picked boys up after that I noticed they had holes in their clothes and the new clothes never came back. When I have them I always let her pick the boys up with the same clothes I pick them up in. Sounds juvenile but it's the only solution I found that works. Strange sense of entitlement.

[treadingwater]

This is an ongoing, seemingly neverending battle here too.  For years, anything I sent over, would just disappear and *NEVER* come back.  Brand new winter jackets, shoes, you name it.  If I asked about it, I would get accused of making "bizarre accusations", and "hallucinating".  Ok.  So, I started the tactic of marking everything that was to come back to my house with an "X" on the tag.  They were *FURIOUS* about that.  Furious.  But...it worked...for a while.  That's done, now they just remove the tag with the "X", and mark things with an "O", and demand that I return them to them.  Not kidding.  These are items that the kids may have worn ONCE, that I still have the receipt for. 

I know that really the only thing that will work, is to send the kids back to them in "their" clothes only, but that means no winter coat, no boots, nothing, as they *REFUSE* to buy the kids anything for their house, even at times basic toiletries, because...as they tell the children..."We pay your mother child support, she's supposed to be buying you everything that you need".  This...includes apparently tampons for the 15yodd, and toothpaste, etc.   Nevermind the fact that while yes, I am indeedy court ordered to receive $500 a month for 4 children...I generally receive that...about 1/2 of the time.  The state has seized his tax return for the past two years, for back payment of child support. 

So...I don't have any real advice, just commiseration!

[2bad2stay]

I was just actually thinking about your "X" solution this morning. LOL.  I guess I should be thankful that at least he left the clothes because he forgot to get them out of the dryer.     I am seriously considering just sending some of the clothes they don't normally wear for them to keep up there so I can stop sending things back and forth.I have plenty of clothes, thanks to hand-me-downs from the older brothers.  The only one that would need a couple of extra things is the oldest, but he could even pack his own stuff to take since he is a responsible kid and I know it would all make it back here.  The problem is with the two youngest ones.  S6 just isn't capable of keeping track of things and S9, because of the Asperger's, has problems with organization on any level.  Trying to get him to remember what was packed is next to impossible. 

I ended up having some e-mails exchanged about the situation this morning.  He actually was decent and is bringing the clothes tomorrow.  He even went to so far as to wish me happy birthday. (It's tomorrow.)  It was kind of funny, but sad.  I was glad we could have a civil discussion today, but it only made it more obvious that this is the exception rather than the norm. 

[Moving On]

In an odd way, this is funny.  I ended up sending almost all of their clothes with them being they're with PB during school weeks.  Then I got some new clothes.  Now S12 will put on my new clothes for him when he gets here, and then purposefully takes those off and puts on the clothes he was wearing when he goes back to her (I often wash them while he's here - I started delaying laundry for weekends), because he doesn't think it's fair that I do their laundry AND supply new clothes when Mom had all of the good stuff.  Good for him!  LOL

What ticks me off is that MOTY often sends them to me wearing the same clothes that they left here with - when I ask them if they ever changed, they often tell me no.  Good think I wash their underwear weekly, or they'd really be interesting. 

And what's worse - almost nobody who (thinks that they) know her would ever believe this.  Though the school has noted that they only change once in a great while, and don't bathe often enough.

[2bad2stay]

Ew. That's just yucky.  I am guessing that S12 will start to care more about his hygiene soon enough, but you might want to have that talk with both of them.  But then again, it might be a matter of having clean clothes available at PB's house. Could you maybe give them a lesson or two on how to do their own laundry? Ick.

[Mr. M]

LOL... was just having this very discussion with some folks.

A long, long time ago I learned not to send clothes to the PEW.  The only things we still exchange are Scout clothing.  That's it.  Even that I should have a second set so that nothing had to go between houses.

Between vanishing clothes and debates over what she sent and what she's entitled to get back, I've taken to immediately washing, folding, and "staging" the clothes that they wear when they are with me and that's what they will wear back to mom's the following Sunday. 

Been working well for a while now.

[Moving On]

I don't doubt at all that they don't have clothing to change into at home.  But they've never cared either, and I didn't really get any support so far as getting them to change, etc, because PB figured that it was one less thing that she had to do if they didn't change.  She really got to the point where she basically had to do NOTHING, which is quite a feat for a SHAM I mean SAHM.

[UKBird]

I am so grateful to posters on this board as it prevented me & H from ever getting into the clothes debate.  It is a complete minefield.

When visits were increased to include overnight stays, H simply sent her a text explaining that she needed to provide clothes for them at her home, and that we would wash whatever they come home in ready for them to wear the next time.  It has saved us from a mountain of heartache, and I thank all those who have posted about this previously and prevented us from getting caught in the potential black hole of lost underwear, socks, t shirts etc.

Of course, we now have the usual shenanigans of them being in clothes waaaay to small for them (13 year old is currently wearing 9-10 year underwear, and 9 year old is in 5-6) but we just point this out to the kids and suggest to the 13 year old that he needs to ask Mum for some new stuff.  He doesn't have the guts yet, but that's his issue to deal with now, as far as I'm concerned.

We also love the shoes issue - in the past 12 months 13 year old has had 2 pairs of trainers at our home, has had 4+ pairs at Mums.  Bear in mind that he sees her once a month to stay for 2 nights.   Always designers trainers (supermarket brand at home!).  And she has a low paid job...

I wonder sometimes if she's doing some sort of "extra-curricular" work to boost her earnings, but let's not even go there!

To anyone about to enter the clothes-debate zone - Keep Out!  Clothes at each parent's home, each parent responsible for clothing the children on their own time.  That's my advice (for what it's worth).