Annoying, but just tell her the right sizes

Casadena

This might be silly. No, it is silly. But my mother-in-law, who I adore, keeps gifting me and my partner clothes. Problem is, she keeps buying me a medium, when I’m an XS, and my partner a large, when he’s bigger than that. I’d raise it with her, except that his whole family is big, much bigger than me, and I know that my sister-in-law for one, is self-conscious about how much larger they are than me.

I don’t know what to do. My MIL is being so generous, and I hate to say it, but we’re well-off and she isn’t (please be assured that we give her what she’ll accept!). Her thoughtfulness is always appreciated, but I feel awful that she’s spending her hard-earned cash on buying us gifts that don’t fit. How do I tell her that I’m tiny and that her son is huge?

banana468

"Thank you so much!  For the future I wear an XS and Wolfgang wears an XL.  Do you have a gift receipt for these?  We love the matching plaid but they aren't in our sizes and I'd love to try to exchange them if possible.  If not, let me know if you'd like them back or I can donate them." 

charlotte989875

I think you’re making this more fraught than it needs to be. Tell her exactly what banana wrote and move on. She’s not doing anything wrong here she probably just doesn’t know what size to get you. 

Casadena

My MIL does this, but the opposite way. I'm usually a size L, sometimes XL and she ALWAYS buys me a medium if she buys be clothes. To be fair, she and my SIL's wear their clothes much more tightfitting than me (not a judgement, just an observation) so I try to assume that she's buying what she would buy? idk. It's annoying though

MyNameIsNot

This is something my H would handle, but just asking for the receipt to exchange it a few times should do the trick. 

levioosa

We tried this with Dad's family, back when we were still seeing them regularly. My mom used to get offended that she was being given XXL to XXXL sizes when she was an XS to S. Just comically the wrong size. Now, my Dad's mom probably did it on purpose, but I think my Aunt was just buying things from her own framework of clothing shopping. To her, an XXL was a really small size. We tried mentioning it, but nothing ever changed, so we just knew that we were going to get clothing for Christmas that would either be a pain to return, or would be a donation. You mention it once, and then move on.

banana468

levioosa said:

We tried this with Dad's family, back when we were still seeing them regularly. My mom used to get offended that she was being given XXL to XXXL sizes when she was an XS to S. Just comically the wrong size. Now, my Dad's mom probably did it on purpose, but I think my Aunt was just buying things from her own framework of clothing shopping. To her, an XXL was a really small size. We tried mentioning it, but nothing ever changed, so we just knew that we were going to get clothing for Christmas that would either be a pain to return, or would be a donation. You mention it once, and then move on.

Right.  I've seen this in one of two ways:

-My mom who does not like tight clothing has purchased things like sweaters for me in a Medium.  (for reference I'm 5'4" and hover in the mid 120s).  Sometimes that works.  Sometimes a medium business style cardigan is comically large and I'm not wearing it.  And my mom isn't huge...but she has a few more pounds on her.  She did the same thing when I was younger and would buy me jewelry she liked on her....because at a nearly 30 year age gap her young teenage daughter would have the same taste as her in her 40s.   Love you mom but no!

-Or when I was in college, I dated a guy who's dad was flowing through the ladies.  And one year we celebrated Christmas with the latest flavor.  She was frighteningly into health and gifted him a pair of pants in a waist size a full size smaller than he currently wore.  It was quote clear that they were goal pants and he laughed.

For my mom, she always thinks that it's not offensive to go too large.  But I'm not wearing a cardigan dress.  

levioosa

banana468 said:

levioosa said:

We tried this with Dad's family, back when we were still seeing them regularly. My mom used to get offended that she was being given XXL to XXXL sizes when she was an XS to S. Just comically the wrong size. Now, my Dad's mom probably did it on purpose, but I think my Aunt was just buying things from her own framework of clothing shopping. To her, an XXL was a really small size. We tried mentioning it, but nothing ever changed, so we just knew that we were going to get clothing for Christmas that would either be a pain to return, or would be a donation. You mention it once, and then move on.

Right.  I've seen this in one of two ways:

-My mom who does not like tight clothing has purchased things like sweaters for me in a Medium.  (for reference I'm 5'4" and hover in the mid 120s).  Sometimes that works.  Sometimes a medium business style cardigan is comically large and I'm not wearing it.  And my mom isn't huge...but she has a few more pounds on her.  She did the same thing when I was younger and would buy me jewelry she liked on her....because at a nearly 30 year age gap her young teenage daughter would have the same taste as her in her 40s.   Love you mom but no!

-Or when I was in college, I dated a guy who's dad was flowing through the ladies.  And one year we celebrated Christmas with the latest flavor.  She was frighteningly into health and gifted him a pair of pants in a waist size a full size smaller than he currently wore.  It was quote clear that they were goal pants and he laughed.

For my mom, she always thinks that it's not offensive to go too large.  But I'm not wearing a cardigan dress.  

On the flip side, we tried asking BIL C's wife what size he was for some pants for Christmas to make sure we got the right ones. She told us a size 30! Which, I'm not judging him but the man is no where near a size 30 and that's just an objective fact. SIL A (it's her brother) and I were immediately like lol, no, I guess we're getting a different gift now because this is a lose lose situation all around. 

short+sassy

MyNameIsNot said:

This is something my H would handle, but just asking for the receipt to exchange it a few times should do the trick. 

You'd think.  But no, not always.  For clothing gifts, my mom has always gotten me clothes that are 1-2 sizes too big.  She doesn't listen, probably doesn't care, when I tell her my size.  Though she gets the right shirt size for my H.

Same person I repeatedly told for 20 years that I don't really like sweets and prefer she not send me "no sugar added" desserts/cookies/whatever from catalogs.  Which is on top of the 20 years I lived at home, including my childhood, when I told her I didn't have a sweet tooth.  She didn't buy me sweets then and would joke she "brought home the wrong baby", because she was such a choco-aholic.

short+sassy

banana468 said:

Right.  I've seen this in one of two ways:

-My mom who does not like tight clothing has purchased things like sweaters for me in a Medium.  (for reference I'm 5'4" and hover in the mid 120s).  Sometimes that works.  Sometimes a medium business style cardigan is comically large and I'm not wearing it.  And my mom isn't huge...but she has a few more pounds on her.  She did the same thing when I was younger and would buy me jewelry she liked on her....because at a nearly 30 year age gap her young teenage daughter would have the same taste as her in her 40s.   Love you mom but no!

I have this issue with Amazon Essentials sweaters and sometimes but not always, their cardigans and long sleeve tees.  Everywhere else, I wear a S or XS shirt.  And I normally would with them also, except for the upper arm area is too tight on some of their long sleeved tops/sweaters.

I just returned a medium Amazon Essentials sweater last week that was comfortable in my upper arms but would be uncomfortable if it was any smaller.  Except the rest of the sweater was so big on me that it looked bad and unflattering.  Got the exact same sweater in another color.  The arms fit the same way.  The rest of it was a little too big, but still looked fine.  That's typically how their mediums fit me.