Elsie, If you are being kind enough to look after your neighbours’ 14-year-old son while his parents are away, I am surprised that they are not going to supply you with a six week stock of nappies for him. To expect you to pay for his nappies seems totally unreasonable. Are you sure you have not misunderstood their intent? As for using terry nappies on a teenage boy who is doubly incontinent, I think the costs of purchasing the terry nappies and plastic pants (you would probably need at least 18 nappies 36” by 36” size if he needs to be changed 6 times per day) would be prohibitive compared with the cost of disposables. If he both wets and messes his nappies, the work involved in cleaning off the mess, washing and drying them, not to mention the electricity, water and detergent usage would be far too high to consider. Terry nappies certainly do work out much cheaper long term (over the lifetime of the nappies – about 3 years) as I have discovered from personal experience with my son who is 16. However, my son is not retarded, only wets (does not mess) and only needs them for nightwear. Also, as he only needs one nappy per day, the initial purchase cost (a pack of five 36” square terry nappies) and washing is not prohibitive. My advice would be to ask his parents to supply you with about 300 disposable nappies for the boy. I don’t think that would be unreasonable. A note to Steve. I suspect that Elsie is in the UK (not the US) from her use of ‘nappy’ and the spelling of ‘neighbour’, so US provisions would not apply. However, the boy’s parents would certainly be entitled to obtain free supplies of disposable nappies for him on the NHS, although in practice, the type supplied is sometimes not up to the job so parents choose to obtain their own.