Why won't she buy clothes that fit??!!!

[BabyLlama]

This is NOT a MIL bashing thread. My MIL is an extremely generous lady and has helped us no end - however she keeps buying my DD too-small clothes. My DD is almost 3 and is very tall for her age and has been wearing 3-4 year clothing for the last 3 months. My DH and I have both told MIL this and she she does see our DD regularly and is always buying her a new outfit (which we are both grateful for), but it's always 2-3 years. I don't like her wasting her money on something that our DD will never even wear, and we have tried over and over again to tell her that 2-3 years is too small.
I don't want to come across as grabby or ungrateful, but also feel bad that my DD simply doesn't fit into the clothes that MIL has so generously bought for her.

We need to trust OP re sizes. My ds wore 12mos clothes at 2 mos. Mil is pushy.

Oh, it is perfectly possible that the child wears bigger sizes than his age.
My 3yo DS is in age 5 because he is 99th centile for height. Unfortunately his clothes mostly look clown like as he is also stick thin.
My DD is 21 months. She's been in age 1-3 since 18 months because she is also tall but unlike DS is quite stocky.

Age 2-3, thanks autocorrect!

Maybe it's like squeezing into size 10 when you are an 18. Lol Deniel And VaniTyt

I know you have said she ignores you when you say the clothes don't fit, but surely if you outright ask her "why do you keep buying them too small?", as in pose an actual question to her face (doesn't need to be aggressive!), she would be hard pushed to say nothing? And ignore you without it being incredibly awkward and weird? Unless she really isn't compus mentis.

I don't understand why you can't just physically put the item back in MIL's hands and say, 'ah thank you, but it's the wrong size and doesn't fit DD'. Nobody can be so dense as to ignore that, surely? Are you a mild and softly spoken sort of person?

Sizes are just indicative - children are different sizes and shops' sizing also varies. FWIW my 8yo wore a pair of age 4 trousers yesterday. It means nothing.

Just keep repeating to MiL and exchange where possible.

we have the opposite issue, our 5 year old is so slum that he needs tops in 2-3, maybe 3-4 as the shoulders are somewhere near his ellbows. we still wear 18-24 months shorts. 5-6 is ridiculously big on him, he can only wear ultra skinny jeans. yet we get joggers and cargo trousers ....

Most of my husband's side of the family have children who have worn clothes much bigger than their age (eg niece wore age 8 at 5, nephew wore age 13 at about 8 or 9) so we always check among ourselves what size everyone is wearing. What irritated me slightly one year is that Grandmother and Aunt who live near each other but not near us both bought my DD similar fleecy jackets in the same colour. Although they were lovely and she did wear them both, it would have helped if they had conferred and picked different colours. There are only so many dark green jackets a young girl who likes red and purple can wear if she doesn't want to clash and we couldn't exchange them.