Does this sound fair re: stepdaughters?

[StephEP]

SDs are 13 and 12. They live with their mum the majority of the time, only with us EOWE now through their preference, and DH pays maintenance accordingly. DH and their mum aren’t on great terms.

In the past, clothes have ‘belonged to the house’ so clothes get washed and returned. Very frequently, ‘our’ clothes go AWOL and return stained, ripped or months later, too small. I would say we buy nicer clothes for SDs but they’re perfectly adequately dressed by their mum too.

Having found last weekend that - yet again - they have “no clothes” here, I would like to suggest to them and DH that the clothes can travel freely with SDs, and we’ll take them on a couple of big shopping trips a year, and buy things like coats (we do this anyway) but they need to be responsible and bring a bag of clothes with them each time. I’d suggest we maintain a supply of pants and pyjamas and the very basics.

Agreed - complete madness to expect them to have different wardrobes for different houses.

The things expected of children in these situations…!

Yes, like I said we have no issues with my SS wearing "our clothes" over to mums and "her clothes" back.... I don't care who bought what once he has a wardrobe of clothes he can wear here. But when clothes aren't returned it's an issue. Money doesn't grow on trees. A pair of trainers cost over £100 a pop, I can't replace that easily.

I think your suggestion works. I'd probably have a few cheap basic outfits as backup and obviously underwear and pj's but they the rest of the clothes can travel over and back.

But maybe have some rules with the girls that they need to leave at least 3 outfits in your house at all times or something in case they forget anything.

Exactly. When SDs were little, it was less of an issue when a few pairs of leggings and tee-shirts went AWOL. Now they are bigger, clothes are far more expensive, and as barely anything is being returned in a wearable state, it’s costing more than we can afford to budget on top of maintenance.

It's an annoying issue to have op. I had this with exh. I think my kids were early teens when they started keeping track of their own favourite things and and refusing to let exh anywhere near them. Their best hoodie would always be 'in the wash' or hidden when they wanted it etc. Having a game playing ex that weaponises the kids is exhausting.

I strongly suspect SDs only wear rags over here in case something good gets left. I do understand their perspective and why it’s happening, but we simply can’t afford to buy them new outfits every month without it impacting elsewhere.

We used to insist DS’s Dad provided his own clothes for his weekends, due to DS’s clothes going missing, coming back looking really shabby or on a couple of occasions going “missing” then being seen on his stepbrother a couple of weeks later!! We changed back to DS taking his own clothes when he was about 9 or 10 as he didn’t like the clothes his Dad had for him and promised he would be responsible for bringing everything back

Make sure sd know that they can bring dirty washing to yours (if heavily worn means unwashed)

If they refuse to bring clothes then you might have to send them home in uniform. Doing that once might help make them understand that it’s in their interest to bring stuff. Or when you drop them off, they can give you some clothes to keep at yours for next time (secondary school kids sometimes have heavy bags like PE, food tech etc)

Exactly! Thankfully because we are to school from school for exchanges, it's much less of an issue. However, whereas previously we lost clothing every single weekend, we were able to determine what SS wore as a small child and put older or cheaper clothing on him. Now he is a 6ft teen with his own expensive style so whilst we might only lost 1 outfit every month, it could cost over £100.

I don’t think there’s abuse or neglect, if that’s what you’re getting at.

I think it’s a combination of:

• our household prioritises looking smart more than their mum’s, and spends more on clothes than she does
• their mum doesn’t wash things well
• SDs themselves want to keep ‘our’ clothes at their mum’s as much as possible

Same for us. School to school isn’t an option for us. But they’ve both got adult shoe sizes and increasingly wear adult clothes and their shopping budget is more than I care to work out…

This is all pretty sad.

This father sees his kids 52 days a year. You have had clothes for those days only.

You say the daughters choose not to spend time with their Dad.

And your comment is you are not a clothes shop.

You’re not a parent. But you and your partner don’t seem to care much about these girls or want to open your whole lives to them. You’re not really getting what’s going on here. The clothes are a symptom.

Honestly buy them duplicates of everything off Vinted. It won’t cost much. But get a grip.

They’ll only be around for 5 more years - 250 more days. Less than a year in real time.

And your issue is some clothing for 50 days?

I’m trying to understand why they’re not bringing their favourite/new items to your house? My teen girls want to look nice at the weekend too.

Yes, it is sad. Their mum moved away and told them they could choose to live with us or her, and they chose her. She’s always been the primary parent. DH got legal advice but as SD1 was 11, was told her request would be granted. Their mum isn’t awful but she is their mate a lot more than we are.

They don’t want to come for extra weekends because they want to see their friends! It’s normal for teens.

Loving a teenager isn’t dependent on buying them a new wardrobe every month.

They don't bring clothes to the OPs house. They arrive in school uniform.

This is what the OP is suggesting though... buy them clothes and let them wear what they want when they want but also for them to understand the supply isn't endless.

Generally they don’t bring anything, because it’s “forgotten” and then they’ll ask to go shopping…

We don’t live near their school, so suspect they don’t feel the pressure to dress up like they would if they thought they’d bump into people they knew.

please Please don’t send them back in uniform to prove a point - the only person you’re shaming and hurting is the children.
have you spoken to them at all and asked them what they would prefer to do regarding clothing? Getting their input will really make them feel seen and their feelings validated. To you it’s clothes, to them it represents something so much deeper about being seen, heard and validated as their own person with their own wishes.

That’s not been suggested by anyone, and has never happened.

I think you are probably referring to me rather than the OP about sending the child back in uniform as I mentioned we explained to.my stepson why we might need to do that.

Unfortunately we had to do it once in the past when he was maybe 6? I cried so much that weekend but it was genuinely a toss up between eating a meal or buying him another outfit. We couldn't afford both. It's not to teach anyone a lesson... its because physically and finacially we couldn't take anymore.

That was suggested by a couple of people in the thread

Jeez, my 13yr old takes a bag when going to dads. She has pj's and some clothes there but takes her own bag for visits dependant in What the plans are. They are plenty old enough to plan their own outfits.

Can you not wash their Friday clothes, and get them to put it on before they leave the house on Sunday? Seems like a pretty straight-forward solution.

Ah, never mind. I see now they come wearing uniform.

My SC were with us 50:50 so they always had pretty much a full wardrobe at both homes and clothes freely went backwards and forwards.
In your situation I would have all the basics - undies, PJ's and some simple outfits - leggings/t-shirts etc. Coats should go with the child ditto shoes. Maybe have spare wellies or crocs so there's always something else to wear on the feet.
Maybe let the girls choose some of their own things? Introduce them to Vinted.

I think I would cut back on the shopping trips. Of course they are going to 'forget' their nice clothes if they know a shopping trip in on the cards. Buy a few cheaper outfits from Shein or Primark - both of which do quite nice things.

I’m interested in your perspective as (I assume) the resident parent getting maintenance.

How many clothes does your ex buy?

I foresee a situation where their mum says we have to pay extra monthly maintenance if a bag of clothes travels with them. DH won’t want to do this and frankly I strongly doubt the additional money would be allocated to SDs’ clothes, so they’d miss out too.

In your OP you say the girls are “perfectly adequately dressed” by their mother and later you say they are dressed in clothes that are “generally in bad condition (stained, wrong size, second hand and very worn)” or “rags”.

Which is it?