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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

Over a duvet cover? Yes, i probably am...

55 replies

deemented · 27/12/2011 18:34

So, Manshape and i swapped bedrooms with DS2, DS3 and DSS a few weeks ago so that they'd have much more room to play etc. DSS sleeps in the bottom bunk when he's here, which is every other weekend and a night or two during the week - much more in the holidays. We asked how they wanted it decorated and did as they wished.

DSS is into Top Gear, and likes the Stig. He also loves yellow New York Taxi's.

For Christmas we got him a huge framed photo of a NYC cab and a clock to match. We also got him a Stig duvet cover. We just wanted him to have familiar things in his room so he'd feel more at home, iyswim.

DSS was delighted with everything he got for Christmas - we had him Christmas morning, and he went home to his mum mid afternoon.

Yesterday his mum, Manshapes ex, rang demanding to know why we wouldn't let him take all his presents home with him. We explained that we hadn't stopped him at all, but some things we wanted to keep here, for the above reason. We let him take home his new camera and MP3 player, which the ex wasn't happy with (but thats a while other thread) and the new clothes he had and chocolate/sweets etc.

So today she has rung again demanding that we bring up his Stig duvet cover because she only has one for him, and it's a Wheres Wally one and she thinks it's too childish for him (he's 12).

I mean really - who only has one bloody duvet cover to their name? And tbh i think she's only saying this to piss us off as DSS sleeps in a double bed at her house.

So, i've said no.

AIBU?

OP posts:

InExcelsisDeo · 27/12/2011 19:05

Ah, there's your answer, she wants to pawn the duvet cover.

It's very sad she did that with the x-box but I am amused at your outwitting her with the engraved MP3 player. Thats very clever.

If you do send a duvet cover back with him, make sure it's embroidered with your stepsons name too, please.

ChippingInLovesChristmasLights · 27/12/2011 19:06

Dee of course YANBU - she's barking!! Always has been, always will be. It's a wonder you let him take any of it with him, I think (as he spends so much time at yours and his mother is likely to pawn it) I'd say he needed to leave it all at yours for when he's there. If she wants linen at her place, she can bloody well buy it!

Sparklingbaubles · 27/12/2011 19:06

That's so sad deemented. Clothes that fit at one house but not at the other. I admire you I really do. (Don't mean to sound patronising)

Original poster

deemented · 27/12/2011 19:09

Oh don't admire me - i'm probably the stepmother from hell!! I do try not to be, but it's hard parenting another womans child, especially because we do it so differently, iyswim?

It's only since May that DSS and i have begun to get to know one another - before that she wouldn't allow him anywhere near me or my children. She's really hard work at times.

OP posts:

Sparklingbaubles · 27/12/2011 19:13

It just sounds exhausting having to consider so many things/people before making a decision and feeling like you are walking on eggshells all the time.

alemci · 27/12/2011 19:17

she could buy a spare duvet cover in John Lewis for a £5. Keep hold of your one you bought for him. It would irritate me too YANBU

CuriosityCola · 27/12/2011 19:22

My friend's son has his own room, furnishings, toys and clothes that are not taken to his mums house. As soon as he arrives he swaps into his clothes at his dads and changes back to go home. So not unusual. It took his poor dad a lot of wasted money to realise his son was purposefully being sent in rags, for him to buy new clothes and for them to never be seen again.

Yadnbu deemented. Like the suggestion of giving her spare old quilt.

springboksaplenty · 27/12/2011 19:23

Dee that's so sad that you have to engrave your dss name on a gift in order to stop his sorry excuse of a mother from pawning it.

Is she genuinely hard up though rather than frivolous with money? If you let him take his clothes back to his what happens to it?

2rebecca · 27/12/2011 19:23

My kids move between my ex's and my house and I believe that their toys are theirs to take wherever they want. A duvet cover is not a toy though. That's household furnishings. I would think my ex had lost it if he started wanting towels and duvet covers to go back and forth. I have never bought things my kids have to keep here as presents for them though. I think that was your mistake. A duvet cover is household furnishing not xmas present stuff to me. I would have just bought your "present" stuff out of the household costs not given it as presents.

springboksaplenty · 27/12/2011 19:24

Ah curiosity I think you may have just answered the question that was at the back of my head. See I just didn't think anyone could be so... mean

Original poster

deemented · 27/12/2011 19:30

I know she has a lot of debt - a lot of things in her house are bought through the likes of Brighthouse, not that i can say much, i have a washing machine through BAYV.

She uses cash convertors a lot - she'll get something from brighthouse, then take it to cash converters when she's short and put it in buyback. Then when DSS's DLA comes through, she'll get it back out, until she's skint again and so the cycle continues.

I do find it sad, having to live like that, yet she's happy to buy cigarettes and alcohol for her new boyfriend.

TBH if we let him take clothes back to his house, it usually gets 'borrowed' by either her or her eldest son. That's why we try an have things here for him.

OP posts:

thefroggy · 27/12/2011 19:38

Re the clothes thing. I went through a phase of sending ds to his dad's in old "playing out" clothes. Mainly because the nice clothes I had been sending him in were NOT coming back. He was being sent back in clothes borrowed from his younger (and much shorter) sb. When I went to his drawer one day to find every pair of jeans gone (bought only weeks before) I finally had enough and told his dad I wanted every last item back or he could replace his son's entire wardrobe here because I had nothing left for him. Everything came back the next week . I sometimes wonder why something as simple as clothing has to become so complicated!

herbietea · 27/12/2011 19:44

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

ThompsonTwins · 27/12/2011 19:57

Sparklingbaubles - yes that's what some parents do. When my DD was younger and visited her father at weekends she wore clothes that were kept there and which she was not allowed to bring home. I didn't have such rules - she could wear home clothes wherever as far as I was concerned. She is now 17 and visits her father when she decides and will definitely not be told by anyone what to wear! There was so much else to cope with at the time that I didn't bother about her father's clothing rules. She just accepted it at the time - small beans as far as I was concerned.

OP you are making your DSS feel at home, cared for and welcome and your DP's ex is not being reasonable. DSS has taken all the big presents home anyway. Just try to ignore her - getting the presents engraved is only wise with such expensive items and will mean they cannot be pawned Calm, calm, calm.

olibeansmummy · 27/12/2011 20:45

Of course yanbu. I think the idea of sending an old one is brilliant. She can't complain and you can feel slightly smug

Pishtushette · 27/12/2011 20:53

if you hadn't bought the new duvet cover how was she planning to manage?

thefroggy · 27/12/2011 21:16

I wouldn't even send the old one. (But I am an arse)

MJinSparklyStockings · 27/12/2011 21:18

PMPL.

Tis madness this SP business.

Poor dsd used to be so scared of admitting her dad actually bought her stuff she'd strip in the car to go home in the clothes she had left mums in.

We prefer clothes not to move between houses because they never come back and on occassion get "accidentally damaged" - think - oh inaccidemtly ironed the logo.

EllenJaneisnotmyname · 27/12/2011 22:21

'Accidentally' damaging clothing seems really petty and using the DC to get back at the ex, but I have so much bitterness towards STBEX adulterous dickhead and his OW (who knew he was married,) that I can sort of understand it.

I'm loath to send the DC to his in nice new clothes that I have bought when there are lots of older ones they are just as happy to wear. Once they go straight to his from school on alternate Fridays in the New Year, they'll be in school uniform and I won't have them carrying clothes around school all day, so he'll have to get them some himself. I suppose they'll have to change back into school uniform on the Sunday. What a palaver!

MJinSparklyStockings · 27/12/2011 22:34

Ellen I wasn't ow though she had an affair.

Re clothes - we found to and from school fri-mon easiest On dsd she when younger found it less traumatic - I think having school in the middle gave her a buffer to deal with things.

We provide(d) everything she needed for ours, so She didn't need tO carry things around. Now she is older we put money direct to her account to get stuff.

EllenJaneisnotmyname · 27/12/2011 23:19

Thanks MJ. It's all pretty new for me and I'm still thinking it through. My boys still don't care what they wear, but I can see giving them an allowance to choose their own clothes would work eventually. I'll suggest it to Dickhead in the future.

mrsjay · 27/12/2011 23:25

she sounds pissed off you have bought him the top gear duvet covermaybe your SS was raving about it and she got all over ot dont let her have it , Its for your house , how weird over a duvet cover ,

MJinSparklyStockings · 27/12/2011 23:45

Ellen I think your ex should provide them with what they need for his house, unless they ask to take stuff I wouldn't send anything - let him go shoppIng and provide them with clothes and stuff.

EllenJaneisnotmyname · 27/12/2011 23:58

I think that's the plan, MJ. Bit worried he'll have forgotten he's supposed to do this for 6th Jan and they'll have nothing but school uniform for the whole weekend. I put everything in emails so he can't pretend it hasn't been agreed, but it doesn't seem to help, so far. Maybe I should remind him for the kid's sake?

Sillyoldelf · 28/12/2011 00:02

OMG Deemented we have had exactly same issue with DSS's mother . Yadnbu .

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