To think MIL should replace DD's hair products?

[comeandhaveteawithme]

MIL recently took DD away on Holiday, for which I am of course very grateful.

I packed her a hand luggage backpack and a small suitcase. I obviously put any liquids over 150ml in her suitcase, which I was told would be checked into the hold.

Once at the airport, they decided DD's suitcase was small enough to go on as hand luggage so they didn't bother checking it in.

Subsequently, all of DD's hair products were confiscated and thrown away. She has long, thick hair that can be difficult to manage so I buy her certain products that we've tried and tested that work on her hair, the products total about £20. Also confiscated was a bottle of sun cream that costs £7.

We don't have a lot of spare money, and still have four weeks of the Summer Holidays left to go and need any spare cash we have. I can't really spend an extra £27 replacing these products that were almost full when I packed them and have now just been chucked in the bin. My Summer Holiday plans and budget are very carefully calculated. £27 is lunches for the week.

It is reasonable to think MIL should have bought her new stuff? I'm not going to ask her, but should she have replaced them? or AIBU and should just suck it up because she took her away and treated her?
DH just thinks it's all my fault and seems to think it somewhat amusing that I "still don't know liquid rules at airports" 🙄

How long was the holiday that you decided to pack whole bottles of all her hair products & sun cream instead of travel sized containers? Choosing to pack a bag that had to be checked instead of making a reasonable effort to give them an option to carry-on would probably peeve me in this scenario.

I don’t have grandchildren yet, my eldest is 27, she uses a plethora of different products for different things. I’m getting to the age in life where I have no idea about all these different products, brands and the cost as quite frankly I’ve never heard of them. I don’t use Tik Tok or anything else of that ilk. Potentially Granny doesn’t/didnt know the products were costly?

Did they apply suncream on holiday? Or not?

just looked the prices omg but it does take the biscuit when that happens

Not for curly/textured/Afro hair.

We can’t all use low-cost/generic supermarket brands on our hair.

Lady, this is not a hill to die on. Buy whatever products are next in line for your daughter. You can never know what is going to happen around airports. It is surprising you cannot replace hair care for 20 pounds but your daughter got international holiday! Look at all such things from the bright side. Her grandma will buy her everything because she loves her

May I ask please how much African women in Africa spend on hair care and what brands of hair care one buy in any African country

Well she took her grandchild on holiday so, presumably, she is 'normally' generous. But it doesn't look like OP will ever be back to answer all these questions.

It's annoying but just one of those things. I remember having to throw away my new suncream etc id just bought as I did something similar. Obviously your not going to ask her like you said and I wouldn't really expect her to offer either it's just a mishap and better best forgotten. The bigger picture is that your daughter has a great holiday.

True but £20 isn't that much.

My haircare products costs so much more than that and I do need them for my hair type.

I'm curious to know what she's using

@NeedUCAdviceplease, only a complete fool would take your view.

The OP’s budget is so constrained that any unplanned expense leaves her unable to buy food for lunch.

The OP cannot afford to buy expensive haircare products.

It is the height of irresponsibility to spend on expensive haircare products when any unexpected expense means that she cannot put food on the table for her family.

this is wacko. Grow the f up, it’s annoying at the most, your dd went on holiday. You put your mil in a difficult situation by sending all that liquids, she should be annoyed.

The problem is that someone else has created an additional expense that the OP cannot afford

@NeedUCAdviceplease surely this someone else has also saved the op the massive expense of feeding her child and days out and summer holiday activities for a week.

She's probably still saved her money by taking her daughter away for a week so she doesn't have to feed her.

God, the selfishness on this is next level.

Why is the kid getting such expensive hair products anyway if OP can barely afford some basics for school holiday lunches? Nuts.

Not all hair is the same though
I imagine their hair is usually thicker and a tighter texture which usually is more happy with coconut oils, richer moisturisers etc
mine is like candy floss and I can’t use deep conditioner
it’s taken me years to get my hair right, I can use cheap shampoo and conditioner but the gel is expensive and so is the mousse

The OP can afford the lunches!!

She has money allocated for hair products

She has money allocated for lunches.

She does not have money allocated for replacement hair products.

Why is this so hard to understand?

@NeedUCAdviceplease, could you explain what happens if the OP has an unexpected expense?

The kids go hungry.

Anyone on this tight a budget cannot afford expensive hair care products.

If the bag is small enough to go in the cabin, you pack travel sized stuff. The travel bottles you fill with your own stuff are about £1 from Boots.

Lesson learnt for next time.

It doesn't matter what the products cost. 🤦‍♀️

I'm back!

I am sorry, I posted this, forgot about it put it to the back of my mind and was busy with family stuff. I haven't checked my emails all day, and I had no idea this would be so popular.

Hello

I will answer some questions - although I would have preferred to keep these details out as I don't particularly want to be recognised.

DD, who is 9, went for 5 nights to Ireland to stay with MIL's husband's relatives. And while I am extremely grateful no matter how much the holiday cost, it wasn't the long and expensive package Holiday somewhere hot that some of you are imagining, just in case that's relevant. MIL did generously pay for flights, which I think were about £50 plus whatever she paid for baggage, plus take her on a day out, but it was mostly spent playing in the family home which is a large country estate, playing with the step-FIL's family kids, and riding their horses. She didn't buy any of the food either, although I believe she offered. A wonderful, memory filled Holiday, but not hugely expensive, if that's relevant.

It also isn't a hot country, with the weather being more or less the same as here, which hasn't been great (its nicer now she's back - sod's law), so I put the sun cream, which was unopened, in as a precaution, and I wouldn't have expected it to come back all used, and even if it had, my DD would have at least got use out of it and no-one's money would have been wasted.

I also would not have expected all of the hair products to be used after only 5 nights. You only use a very small amount daily and they usually last a month. I had had them three or four days before I packed them.

It was not shampoo or conditioner, they were styling products. Not essential but they do make her hair tamer, neater and manageable. I use cheap, tesco own brand shampoos, you'll all be pleased to hear. I wanted her to look nice on Holiday. I didn't pack any shampoo but MIL did bathe her and use a shampoo and conditioner, I have no idea what brand. She didn't use any styling products and as a result, her hair looks crazy in all the photos and was very wild and tangled when she arrived home, but no big deal as long as she had fun. Her toothpaste, by the way, was under 100ml so wasn't chucked.

Yes, I was clearly verbally told the luggage was going to be checked in. I was even given a copy of the paperwork and could clearly see that hold luggage for each passenger (MIL, her husband, her friend, and DD) had been booked and paid for. I therefore had no reason to suspect luggage wouldn't be checked in.
It was not checked in because DD had a beautiful new Laura Ashely suitcase, bought by my mum (again, very generous) that she was very attached to and didn't want to hand over and MIL decided to indulge her and let her keep it with her. No-one thought of the hair products until they were being chucked in a bin.
I didn't think the case would not be checked in because a) I had clearly been informed otherwise and b) I actually didn't think it and small enough and I'm still surprised it was and I didn't think you were allowed more than one bag? She carried both the backpack and suitcase into the cabin with her.

I didn't give a hair care handover but DH, who drove them to the airport, was responsible for giving a handover as the last parent to be with her and the one to be actually handing her over and obviously as her dad, he is just as aware of her hair routine as I am.

What else was there? Oh yes, I shouldn't buy my DD expensive hair care products if I'm so poor (I'm paraphrasing). Well, I spend £20 on her looking nice and presentable (mainly with school in mind) every month in my big monthly shop. It's budgeted into my shopping and it's perfectly manageable. I have also tried many products (including the lidl brands suggested) and I know what works well for us.
However, if I have to buy these twice because they've been thrown away, then that's £40 I have to budget for instead of £20, and that's a little less manageable and means less other things. It doesn't mean I cant afford £20 on hair products and it certainly doesn't mean they don't get lunch, so please can people stop saying that, for goodness sake.
It means that once I've done my monthly shop, and paid my bills, I have a specific amount left for other things, and during the school Holidays when there is more to pay for, this amount is very specific, so I don't want to have to spend some of it on replacing something I've already bought.
I am grateful to the people that understood this and didn't make rude comments or give patronising "advice".

As I said in my OP, I'm not going to ask the MIL to pay. I was merely curious as to whether other people agreed that I felt she should have. Thank you to the people that joined in but the patronising and rude comments have sadly made me wish I hadn't bothered.

I'm sure people will nitpick at this reply and that I will be back XD

PS: since when did flying somewhere automatically mean international? I mean technically, Ireland is international but FFS people, domestic flights exist!

Don't be bloody ridiculous.

"The kids go hungry" ...honestly!!

I simply don't buy the replacements, or I make cuts elsewhere to my Summer Holiday budget.

I was just saying, the products lost are the same price as what I spend on lunch, o highlight that it's quite a lot of money

AT NO POINT did I even vaguely suggest that it's a choice between hair products and lunch.

For GOODNESS sake!!

It's a shame the products were thrown away rather than repacking them into another checked-in case. Appreciate you did not plan to ask for them to be reimbursed - that would be incredibly rude. Even if the flights and destination weren't particularly expensive, your MIL has presumably saved you the costs of feeding and entertaining your DC for a week (even if other family members paid for the food while there rather than MIL).

Absolutely, and I'm very grateful for that. But the point, as a pp has already helpfully pointed out, is I already knew this was going to happen when I worked out my budget for the summer Holidays, and so the money I had saved had already been allocated elsewhere, and to my other children who will now be lunchless and starving please call social services immediately and I will now have to make a few small changes and re-jig my budget.

Who paid for the holiday? If it was your mother in law, then you have an unbelievable cheek expecting her to reimburse you £30 odd quid!