Is your child constantly losing things after the contact weekend at dad’s house?

You know the drill, right? You bought new clothes in the fall, including a wonderful 3-in-1 jacket for your daughter, in her beloved purple, plus lots of jeans (how do holes get in the pants all the time??), warm and lighter sweaters – just the whole package. The daughter grows, the seasons change, school starts. Quite a lot of new children’s things must now be purchased.

Expensive fun. You add it up and come up with just under 500 euros, which you spent on all the necessary things in one month alone. A second pair of shoes is still missing, but you wait until the next one.

Thank God your ex at least pays alimony! Not lavishly – you get just under 300 euros a month for your daughter – but your best friend is dependent on advance maintenance payments and sees even less every month. How does she do that?

Well – so you are at least not dependent on getting everything used at the clothing flea market. You attach a lot of importance to good quality, so the new jacket also costs over 150 euros and will survive at least 2 sizes. That is: Longer than a year or a season can be worn.

The daughter is totally happy with the new things.

After the next weekend of contact, the warm underjacket is gone. You could also swear that you gave her 3 pairs of jeans for the weekend – but only two came back with her.

The daughter shrugs her shoulders. The clothes should probably be in the laundry at Dad’s.

Since the things are still so new, you yourself of course don’t know exactly how they looked – so you can’t describe them either.

In addition, the daughter now has too few clothes in your time. Yes, those were the days when you had a change of clothes for the baby 20 times over! Baby and toddler clothes were still easy to get at the flea market – as the child grows older, it’s no longer so easy to find jeans without holes. Besides, your daughter is now at an age when she no longer wants to wear children’s clothes from the flea market.

So what can you do about it?

Every mother who was able to separate reasonably well from her ex-husband now picks up the phone, and asks if he could still quickly bring over the missing things or when she can come to get the things.

For mothers with toxic ex-partners, it doesn’t work.

Any direct contact is like an invitation for the ex-partner to express his gloating, hatred and contempt.

So you open all the flanks to be triggered, to be hurt, and above all to be thoroughly annoyed once again by his sourness.

You feel as helpless again as you did when you were still together. He obviously still has control over you and your feelings.

Very likely, money has always been a big issue between you in the past. Either you always bought everything yourself, because otherwise there were endless discussions about whether this purchase for the baby was now necessary, or you were financially dependent on him from the beginning.

An outsider may think “What a fuss! It’s just stuff that’s in the other apartment! At the next contact they are there again, and can be worn again.”

But an outsider does not see what happens in the meantime at home with the mother. A heartbroken daughter who can’t wear the jacket without the underjacket (because it’s not warm enough) and desperately wants to wear the jeans with the little flower appliqué and is now crying bitterly. You see how sad your child is with it, and that makes you doubly angry.

Seeing the posts from my Facebook group, the above is not an isolated case. Almost every mother with a toxic ex can tell a similar story.

Honestly, in my opinion, these men want to use it to maintain financial control.

“It’s bought with my money anyway!” they may think to themselves. So they keep it right away.

The underjacket is very likely no longer findable or the jeans will also be “forgotten” in the future. As long as the dad doesn’t remind the child of this and conscientiously collects the things before the child handover, this won’t work either, because the children think about it last of all. They are children!

Other child fathers definitely enjoy it when they receive a corresponding email from the mother, who anxiously inquires about the whereabouts of the expensive clothes.

Even more so when she calls directly and gets upset on the phone that he didn’t think of it himself.

Toxic people with narcissistic personality disorder are energy vampires. They need excitement and lots of emotion around them, it is like an elixir of life for them.

If we want to learn to deal with such situations confidently, without feeling helpless all the time, there is one thing we must not do:

Contact and scold.

Letting go is the order of the day

Oh, I can see you grinding your teeth!

“This guy gets away with everything he does! Nobody shows him a red card! I already pay so much, he pays so little for the child. He has already shirked child support (via alternating model coercion or calculated poor as a self-employed person), and now I just pay everything alone!”

Yes.

That is ” only” money.

But what about what can’t be weighed with money? How much is your psychological balance worth to you?

Sure, it is impossible how such guys get away with their tyrannical behavior everywhere. But for the sake of your self-protection, I ask you to leave the task of showing the red card to others who do not have the same history with him as you do.

You’ve already been through enough with this man.

You may protect yourself now.

So: I have 2 possible solutions for you to consider below.

Option A) Double up

You buy twice every time (same quality, same style). With each seasonal purchase, a suitcase with 50% of the clothes goes to the father’s household.

Then you so don’t care what comes along again or not. Can you even begin to imagine this feeling?

Of course, it’s easier if you don’t have to turn over every euro twice, of course. But even if you only have a certain budget available – think about how you can split it.

Option B) Photo checklist

You take a photo of each item of clothing, compile the contact clothes in a list and give it to the child for the weekend. Then even little kids can learn to pick out their stuff and check off the list, even if they can’t read yet. This idea was mentioned in my Facebook group, and I think it’s really neat.

One or two moms might think it’s bad that we’re giving the responsibility to the kids.

I think that this definitely has an advantage: The child learns faster to be responsible for his things. In the whole separation hullabaloo and stress, this can still have one of the best outcomes for the children.

Then, when the child complains to you that he doesn’t have the pants here, you look at him with a warm look and say something like, “I’m sorry you didn’t remember to bring the pants before you got home.” (It goes without saying that you don’t vent about the father’s lack of responsibility!)

Once again, this is about your protection.

It’s about letting go of what you can’t control – how the Ex handles the clothes, for example, what he reminds the kids of, or even reflecting on how important it is to be responsible for that.

That didn’t work back when you were still together, did it?

There are – you guessed it – things besides the clothes that bring us again and again to the brink of insanity: Missing school books, expensive Christmas presents from your parents, sports equipment like sleds or bikes or longboards.

The bottom line is that they are not your things – but your child’s. If the child then puts the clothes on at the Ex’s house or plays with the toys there – then that’s where they’re supposed to be.

How do you see it? Are you also familiar with this problem? What solution have you found in the meantime and are you emotionally comfortable with it? Mind you – without touching you by email or phone?

I look forward to your comment below!