Do your difficult child's loan their clothes out?

Nancy

Well-Known Member
This is one of my pet peeves. difficult child is constantly letting all her friends wear her clothes and we never get them back. Some things she has loaned out new with the tags still on. Yesterday she loaned out one of her two work shirts, she wore the other one to work. She worked til 11p.m. and has to go in at 11 this morning so she has no shirt to wear. Her girlfriend's shirt was in the wash :crazy:. We will never get it back. I told her if she wants a clean shirt for today she will have to wash it herself. It's rolled up in a ball on her floor.

She has four sweatshirts loaned out since the beginning of June. The other day I had her ask one of her friends for it back and she said it was in the wash :rolleyes:. She gave her other friend a brand new pair of shorts to wear two weeks ago. It will be winter and we will never see them again.

I told her that I will not buy her one more thing until she gets back all the clothes she has loaned out because obviously she has too many.

What is this about? My husband says she has such low self esteem she will buy her friends with anything she has. It was very rare for us to loan clothes out when I was growing up, it just didn't happen. I don't think I ever borrowed anything from anyone.

Nancy
 

WhymeMom?

No real answers to life..
I would suggest you let her buy her own clothing. If she values it she will watch where it goes??? Maybe say you will pay for underwear, but other stuff is on her nickel.....

I know its exasperating when they don't value what has been provided...
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I think its a combo of things. One that she has that need to buy friends, two that doesnt really value her clothes because doesnt buy them, and three that she is a very compassionate and giving person.

Jamie does the same thing but he buys his clothes! He is forever leaving his clothes behind when he visits us and then telling us that one of us can wear them. Uhhh son, dont you need them more than we do?

I would have a talk with her and tell her that you understand that she wants to share the nice things that she has but it has to stop.
 

meowbunny

New Member
I never knew what I would find in my daughter's closet when she was in high school. Clothes were constantly traded. Unfortunately, she usually got the low end while giving up the high end.

After a few battles, I gave up. I simply decided that this wasn't worth the fight. If she chose to "loan" a friend her new top and her friend chose to not return it, I would not replace it. She actually went without a jacket one winter. Granted, our climate is not below freezing or snow filled in the winter but it is cold. My only rule became the clothing on her back had to be acceptable -- no holes, nothing skimpy, not smelly or stained. If they were any of those things, I simply threw them in the trash.

The no replace policy saved me a tremendous amount of money. By her senior year, she actually figured out that the loaning and trading of clothes was not always a good idea and did it less and less, even though it still occurs at times but now usually with clothes she really doesn't like.
 

dreamer

New Member
You asked what this is about and you answered it. Low self esteem and buying friends.
My difficult child has always done this, she even gives away her most precious prized possessions. Yes, even when she buys them.altho she buys little becuz she has no income, gets no allowance and we have noobne ever giving her gifts, so she only has her own money on rare occasions. She has given away her coats, her shoes, her bedding, I think she even tried to give away her eyeglasses. Why? She says aw mom they NEEDED it. Nevermind her dad has been on disability since she was 2 yrs old and I have been on it for years, and we have nothing. I have decided to turn this around in my mind and think of her as just kind generous and not selfish. :)
 

Marguerite

Active Member
Because I still have t he best of my wardrobe from the Seventies & Eighties, plus the best of my sisters' wardrobes from the Fifties & Sixties, I get 'raided' not only by my own kids, but by neighbourhood kids. And yes, a lot of it never comes back. But I know if I want it back, I just go and ask for it.

I also learned, years ago, to NEVER let anyone else wash anything they borrowed - return it dirty, honey, I'll take care of it. Because people tend to wash borrowed clothing in hot water on the industrial cycle. It doesn't do any good at all to wool, leather, satin or velvet, especially with boning. And it KILLS taffeta!

So get your daughter (or do it yourself) to ask for the clothes back as they are - in the wash? Just give it back to me as it is, even if it's wringing wet. No worries, I'll handle it. I'm glad you enjoyed wearing it.

Because then YOU are in control again over how the garment is treated (preferably with more respect than this sort of friend) as well as WHEN you get it back - some people are amazingly lax about when they get around to doing laundry, especially other people's.

I know I keep a very messy, unbelievably untidy house - but one thing I'm darned good at, is my laundry. It's untidy too, but what goes in for the wash will GET washed, properly, within the week (unless the weather is bad and I have to wait for clearer weather). Then what is on the clothes line gets air-dried, taken off the line, folded IMMEDIATELY and then put away immediately. Anything else means piles of clothes left to stagnate and fester. And crumple.

I do agree about getting her to buy her own clothes - if you buy stuff for her, there are a number of problems:

1) She mightn't be all that familiar with what she owns - "where did this striped top come from?"

2) She mightn't like what you buy for her enough to value it - "Yeah, you can borrow this blue top, it's not really my style anyway, it would look better on you." And finally

3) Since SHE didn't pay for it, and you keep buying her more stuff anyway, it's no big deal. If it doesn't come back, you'll soon buy her another one.

For a while, we told our kids that they had A$200 a year clothing budget. We would go shopping with them but THEY had veto. And if they went over the $200, they had to pay for anything more that year.
Then they got their own money and bought their own clothes - easy child 2/difficult child 2 has spent $200 on one item - a fully boned, velvet corset - and no way would she EVER lend that.

Marg
 

Janna

New Member
Nancy,

B does not lend out clothing, but has "lent" or traded alot of other things in the past. Video games, video game systems, cell phones etc.

When he was reunified with me, I asked him about the Game Boy Micro I had given him for Christmas, and the Nintendo DS Lite the foster mother had given him for Christmas, because he didn't have them. "I dunno where they're at" (which is a lie and transfers to, "I gave them to someone").

I, personally, agree with everyone else. A) it's his way of trying to "buy" his friends, because truthfully, he's never had alot of them, B) it's his way of thinking he's fitting in with whomever and C) he has absolutely no respect for anything.

So, upon his reunification, I told him I would give him a set amount per month in a clothing allowance, and anything he wanted through the course of the year materialistic wise (anything that isn't a necessity in other words) he can work for and buy himself (except birthday and Christmas). I will not spend one more cent on something for him to give it away.

I wouldn't buy her anything else, but then, we're poor and I can't afford for my kids to give out clothing. They'd be going out naked.
 

Nancy

Well-Known Member
"A) it's his way of trying to "buy" his friends, because truthfully, he's never had alot of them, B) it's his way of thinking he's fitting in with whomever and C) he has absolutely no respect for anything."

Janna, I think this is exactly my difficult child also. She never has had respect for personal property, hers or others and she does try to buy friends and fit in. Years ago she would give her lunch money away to anyone who wanted it.

She gave (loaned) her girlfriend her old mini iPOD without asking me. I had to ask the girl for it back myself. She told her other friend last month that she could have her old cell phone because she got a new one...no way, I hid it so if hers breaks we can use that one. She does that all the time, she offers her friends anything she has without checking first to see if that's OK with me.

I'm going to stick with not buying her anything until she gets the most recently loaned clothes back and then a set amount and not one penny more.

by the way she wore her dirty shirt from last night to work today.

Nancy
 
G

guest3

Guest
oh gosh difficult child II doesn't lend he gives out stuff all the time, video games, toys, clothes, food, books, my stuff! He is terrible. Once he gave awya all his magiv treehouse books to a younger brother of a friend, then hje proclaims he wants them back, when I told him he could not ask for them back, he told me we had to buy them again, I was like hello "library"
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Daughter, when using drugs, used to "trade" clothes with her friend. Since she worked, she mostly bought her own clothes, so I couldn't say anything, but they used to have some nasty girl wars over the clothes. Once her druggie friend banged on the door and screamed and swore at me that she wanted her sweater back. She looked scary. Most of my daughter's friends were nuts. It wasn't fun when I'd get these little visits when daughter wasn't even home.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
My son used to drive me nuts with this when he was a teenager! He had a good friend that he used to stay with a lot on the weekends and the friend had a brother a few years older - all of them were just about the same size. I'd buy my son clothes and never seen them again - then I'd see one of his friends wearing the new shirt I had just bought him! Or he'd come home in somebody elses clothes!

Turns out, when he was at their house, they'd just throw all their clothes into a big pile on the bedroom floor. They'd get up in the morning and just snatch a shirt and a pair of jeans out of the pile and put it on. After a while they just had this big communal clothes pile and nobody even remembered what belonged to who. There were probably a dozen of their friends who also had clothes in the "pile".

Actually, he left clothes just about everywhere he went! A real pain when I'd have to buy him new pants because he couldnt remember whose house he'd left his one good pair of khaki pants at.
 
K

Kjs

Guest
My son traded clothes with another kid. Several kids actually. Never did get back his long sleeve underarmer. Kid said he lost it. I ended up at school and asked the office to send a note to a girl to return my son's hoodie. Still it took months to get back what they traded.

That won't happen again. I hope not atleast.
 
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