Leave my clothes alone!
Teenagers will take everything you own if you let them – but don’t even think of touching their personal get-ups, writes Emma Burstall
I realised something was wrong when I found myself wrapping my expensive new hair serum in a pair of old socks (clean) and hiding it in a gym bag in the corner of my bedroom. It shouldn’t be like this, I thought, but I knew it was the only way. For several days I was able to enjoy my lovely smooth, sleek hair. Until one evening, I left the serum by mistake on my dressing table and Daughter spotted it.
“Mmmmm,” she said, picking up and fingering the sparkly pink tub and sniffing its contents. “Is it nice?”
“Not really,” I lied, but I knew the game was up. Sure enough, the serum began rapidly to disappear until the tub mysteriously found its way into Daughter’s bedroom, where it has mostly remained.
The same could be said of virtually all my nice things. When it comes to designer products, of which, I may say, I have very few, Daughter appears to have x-ray eyes. It seems that she can locate an expensive mascara, carefully concealed beneath the cheaper brands in my makeup bag, from a hundred paces.
Foundation, perfume, moisturiser – nothing on my dressing table is sacred. And that goes for all other items of clothing and jewellery, too. I can never find any black tights because she’s rifled through my drawer, identified and removed the sole pair of un-laddered ones. I come back from the shops armed with a pack of lovely new opaques, and ping! Before I know it the whole lot has magically vanished and even, perhaps, had the feet chopped off to make leggings.
Does Daughter ask if she may mutilate my new tights? Of course not. Does she look even slightly guilty when I roar up to her bedroom at the top of the house and discover my best black cashmere jumper discarded in a corner among the cat fluff? No way. As far as she’s concerned, I have no possessions of my own except the ones that she doesn’t want.
I do sometimes wonder when all this rifling and sniffing and nicking goes on. I never catch her at it. She must do it when I’m asleep. It’s not even as if I get any credit for owning items worth filching.
Daughter is training to be an actor, which means that she’s constantly putting together outfits for various roles. I kindly lent her (for once, she asked) a smart pair of black, cropped trousers and a handbag and she practically wet herself trying them on. “Perfect,” she said, mincing around my bedroom swinging the handbag. “Suburban housewife, perfect.” Then she put up her hair using my special clip and assumed a mumsy expression: “Come along now, children, I need some help with the chores.” As if I ever speak like that.
You might think that Teenage Son is less of a threat, but not so. I have one decent pair of tweezers and about three rubbish ones. The good tweezers are supposed to live in the bathroom cabinet, but are never there when I need them.
Quite apart from worrying about what he uses them for, it’s intensely annoying. I scream like a banshee, and Son, if he can be bothered, languidly produces them from under his bed or behind his bookshelf. I’ve bought him several pairs of his own, but he seems to prefer watching me reach boiling point.
My husband doesn’t escape either. He has no nice shirts or sweaters because Son appropriates them. No sooner has Husband unwrapped his birthday or Christmas present than it’s sauntering out on Son’s back. I sometimes wonder why my husband takes the trouble to open presents at all – he could save himself the effort and just hand them over straightaway.
Not even pants or socks are out of bounds. Husband’s drawers are raided regularly and boxers are defiantly paraded above the tops of jeans. And Son has the audacity to mock his father for his bad dress sense while we fret that our boy will be done for indecent exposure.
I take comfort from the fact that at least we’re not alone. Daughter’s friend Amber tells me that her mother has put a padlock on her wardrobe. “But I know where she keeps the key,” she sniggers. Very amusing. Not.
My friend Helen is constantly fishing her luscious mascara out of one or other of her three daughters’ makeup bags. She forbids them to repeat their misdemeanour – and the mascara has gone again the next day. When challenged, the daughters simply deny it. I mean, did it walk out on its own?
“Black cardigans are a particular problem in our household,” Helen says. “They just disappear. I have to wear mine all the time, which gets a bit boring, or I’d never see it again.”
In theory, we should be allowed to use our kids’ things without asking whenever we feel like it, but it’s not a level playing field. If I take so much as a dollop of Daughter’s facewash because she’s finished off my posh one, I’m accused of “using it all up” and ordered to buy a new bottle.
Helen agrees: “If I borrow something from one of my girls, all hell breaks loose. But it’s open season on my wardrobe.”
The psychologist Terri Apter says that teenagers’ brains are wired differently from the rest of us, which means they are less good at “impulse control and forward-planning. If there are things they feel they need, such as mascara, in order to look good on a night out, they can’t quite get a perspective on that not having priority.”
Apparently, this unfortunate physiological glitch doesn’t tend to resolve itself until they are at least 18 – or are having to go out and earn the money to buy things themselves.
So, parents, until then the only answer may be to bury your prized possessions in the garden – or get a safe.
Culled from guardian.co.uk