MIL gave children gifts from a homeless charity for christmas!

[Jellyworms]

Thats it really, just a bit taken aback!

MIL is a strange one at the best of times, always expects but never wants to give. She didnt get my children (her first and only grandchildren aged 2 and 4) anything last year but asked my dh why we didnt gift her anything. Anyway, fast forward to this christmas.

she came over for christmas day with two big paper bags full of toys for both my children, i was shocked as the only thing shes ever brought them is a pair of socks.. children both started opening said gifts when my dd bought me over a piece of paper that was inside to read im assuming thinking it was a christmas card.
i started reading and to my absoloute horror it said “merry christmas from community assosiation” then at the bottom had a box ticked boy x girl x age and packed by x x x

i was absoloutley shocked, didnt make a thing of it until she had left later in the evening when i bought it up to dh. He completley didnt understand the situation and brushed it off.

googled the charity and its a homeless charity for children and adults facing homelessness and fleeing abuse (none of which she is!) no idea how on earth shes wrangled this but im absoloutley seething with anger at her for being so selfish taking from vulnerable children, lying and also not giving two hoots about her grandchildren that she cant even purchase them a gift.
the gifts were gorgeous and worth id say £60 per child easily that people have clearly bought to donate in good will.

What would you do? Do i confront her? Do i tell the chairty?

Lots of food banks you don’t need any referrals just turn up and put your name down and it’s done on trust unfortunately

I was just going to say this. I volunteer at a community pantry and pantry members are asked to fill in a form in Oct/Nov with ages of children they require gifts for. Foodbanks often need referrals from agencies but pantries are different.

OP your MIL may have 3 adult children living at home and earn a good salary BUT going by the many threads on here that say adult children don’t contribute to the household that may be a factor? She may earn a good salary but is it all spent on supporting these adults that live with her?

As I said earlier if you’re in doubt speak to the charity.

I've volunteered a few times with a charity that collects and distributes Christmas gifts for children. All the recipients were referred by professionals (SW or similar) or other charities that were actively involved with the families. No one could just nominate themselves. If MIL has obtained these gifts under false pretences the charity would definitely want to know.

I don’t think I’d go in all guns blazing yet. It could be that the association had been overwhelmed with gifts/donations and your mother had somehow been present/knows the organisers and they asked her if she had grandchildren who could make use of the excess. There could be an explanation. Try and find out, maybe via your dh if he could raise it with his mum.

Get your husband to phone her and ask why some charity gifts have been given to your kids.
Just call her out!

Because i didnt want any of dh family seeing this and being able to work out its me 😅

That doesn't explain the other threads but ok, thanks for answering.

Standard online safety advice/staying anonymous advice is to change ages and locations etc each time you post.

Oh God no mistake

I do this all the time…change my kids ages and family details….never know who’s on here do ya 😜

On a forum where name changing is allowed, it's probably much better to do that as regardless of the ages the OP has picked today, the thread is incredibly outing in its detail anyway.

So why mention ages of the children at all then, if you need to lie then how will people know which bit is true or not, seems attention seeking

As for presents no one has to buy any for anyone children included and no I dont keep track of who buys what or not

I didn’t know that. That could put people off donating 😕

I wouldn't contact the charity to be honest - they will be able to give you zero information about the circumstances around how she came to get these gift packages and I HIGHLY doubt they will want them back. I've worked in this sector and every year we would use a list of who needed to be catered for and we usually ended up with extra as people are really generous and we would never have left anyone without. So I'd be surprised if they would want them back. They may have got these gifts as donations from another charity so how far back do you take it. At the end of the day, I think your girls deserve to have a gift from granny so I wouldn't be putting any child in a position to have to give a gift back.

Your dh needs to have a word with mil and clarify that is not what this type of service is for and that you do not consent to her giving out your kids details to a service you are not using. If you wanted to, you could contact the charity and ask if they have recorded your kids/ your info and ask for that to be removed from their systems if you're bothered about it.

I think she sounds like she has issues - unclear what they are or where they stem from- but all you can do is have dh point out the behaviour and why it's not ok and then really it's up to her what she does with that.

Also just to say, where I am we have food banks that are aimed at reducing food waste as opposed to just alleviating poverty so anyone can go in and take what they want. There are also a few community organisations that run a specific Christmas toy shop where goods are paid for and money goes back into the charity. So until your dh speaks to her and gets the details you don't actually know what this is.

You can't just turn up to a food bank, you need to go through a process and then be referred. If she's going then either her financial circumstances are very different to what you imagine or she's commuting very serious financial fraud.

It's called fudging the details all over the place to hide your real identity. This is an anonymous forum and plenty want to keep that anonymity. If you post enough information about yourself across multiple threads and are consistent with it, someone who actually knows you IRL could eventually recognise you. So people name change occasionally and alter minor details about their lives that don't affect the situation of the thread.

Lots of foodbanks don't need referrals.

Or community pantries/kitchens.

And many of them do a Christmas gift giving scheme.

Yes, this has already been said.

But the OP has given so many details that her MIL would instantly recognise, she'd be much better off name changing rather than changing their ages.

Not that the ages were relevant really anyway.

Added risk involves MNHQ reposting this thread on Facebook.

At this time of year, they are overflowing with donations of gifts, likely they had actually encouraged your MIL to do this. One of our local DV charities collected 2000 gift bags from 1 local company alone, I highly doubt there are 2000 individuals who are fleeing DV in our city. I wonder what they do with the items they haven’t gifted on, as they are all wrapped for Christmas particularly.

But still agree it’s an embarrassing thing to do when you have the means.

Things have clearly changed from when I used to go then

I think they had to because a lot of families were on the bones of their arses while waiting for a referral.

I suppose sometimes people don't get paid on time and if they're living hand to mouth, being able to skip the referral would really help immediately.

I think you need to tell the charity. Otherwise she will do it again next year.