Why MIL keep buying girl's clothes for DS?

[Chandra]

Stupid question here but I am clueless about it...MIL has not sent a dress (yet) but we get trousers with flowers, pink t-shirts and flowerly tops. Eventhough I appreciate the attention, I don't understand why MIL, who is sooooooo terribly conscious about what she wears, keeps buying girlie outfits for DS. Any ideas?
I'm clueless!!!

I knew there was not an easy answer for it!!!

I find my mother's generation gave a lot of frou-frou sort of stuff to dsI think it's because that's what THEY dressed their boys in. . .that sort of European aesthetic. They seem think the sort of trendy, boyish way we dress our ds's is atrociousthough WE know better

Anyway I'm down on mil's generally & believe deep down that some mils "accidentally" do things to displease us as an expression of their subconscious hostility.

Maybe because girl's clothes are more appealing, not so much around for boys!!

Are they clothes that you can change? I've managed to take back a few undesirable presents and exchange them for an alternative, then say, "we really loved your present, but it was too small/ tight round the bum/ short in the arms, so we hope you don't mind, but we changed it for this...and enclose a photo of your ds looking gorgeous in the new outfit!"

Otherwise,I'd say that she's telling you that you should have had a girl!

Sorry, speech marks in wrong place, should have been after "this" !

Yeah... sometimes I found some lovely dresses and I wish that boys clothes could be equally nice (but still boyish) but have not bought him anything girlie yet, I could understand that when he was tiny and not mobile, but a running boy in a flowerly top with frills?

Mmmm. I will need to go to Spain to do so, but that's an idea . Or once I have enough of them I can swap them )

I would ask your DH to have a word - say it offends his masculinity to dress his DS in girlie clothes and try to direct her to some nice catalogues (where its clear that what the boy models are wearing is good for boys!!!) It's worth letting her know, otherwise its such a waste (and you might get to the stage where you feel you have to put your ds in these clothes when she comes round!) RESIST!!!!! or maybe she just has bad taste!

She has the bad taste of spent all the time criticising people because of what they wear which I think makes the problem even more interesting... and no! I have not been remotely tempted to use them, fortunately, she doesn't come to visit very often .

dino, my mil is a wonderful knitter with terrible taste. Luckily she also doesn't have much money. So I solved the problem by buying patterns and wool that I liked and sending them to her in the guise of saving her the expense of buying them herself. I now get beautiful things that my children will actually wear.

Chandra, is your mil spanish? I think that culturally the men wear much flowery clothes than in england. My mother is Italian and has bought several Mexican things for my ds that I carefully saved and used on my dd instead. I think that if I were still living in California, I would have put them on ds, so I don't hold it against my mother.

I had the opposite problem. Until she gave up buying presents altogether my MIL bought boys' clothes for dd. Not unisex but blatantly boyish. This was not an unconscious expression of hostility, it was fully conscious. She used to say things like 'I always think of him as a boy'. She, by the way, had only boys herself.

I just took them straight to the charity shop - except the Harry Potter sweatshirt which dd quite likes because her (male) cousin told her it was 'cool'.

I'm quite surprised Chandra as my relatives are very definite about boys vs girls clothes and never the twain shall meet! I know that some of the clothes tend to be more traditional (Peter Pan collars, smocking,rompers) but they always seem to be sterotypically boyish, just not in the "modern" sense.

Flowers and frills are something else though.....