Totally important. I will definitely sacrifice stuff for myself for my kids to have (as my mom did for me). It is harder now tbough imo. Back in my day it was Guess and umbro, but I know in schools today (here in south Florida anyway) it is Tory burch and Louis Vuitton. Thankfully I have boys, but I even felt bad with the whole $300 baseball bat discussion. Not in our budget and the kids now don't know the difference but how long until they do.
Can you go through a used sports equipment company? It is crazy how expensive all this "stuff" is and many times is only used for one season.
This is an age group wired for conformity and wary of outliers.
IME, most typical kids who live among those similar in socioeconomic levels are OK so long as they are aware of the trends and have a few "totems" of their tribe. It's seldom that a boy is singled out solely because of his clothing or grooming. If this kid has a history of being bullied, he probably has(ve) some issue(s) that are off-putting to peers. If this is the case, the most on trend wardrobe will not suddenly make everything OK.
For parents now, have any of you thought to try garage sales and that type of thing for while your kids are growing, yet "everyone" has the insane costing Lebron shoes!
I remember starting to care in 6th grade...Coca-Cola shirts ala 1985-6 I think. My Mom was cooler than me, she skipped the area mall (The Limited was THE store everyone wanted to shop from) and took me to Chicago (she was from the city) and bought me Benetton, Esprit, etc. By no effort of my own, I had the coolest clothes in my small town public Jr High. I eventually went into a big preppy phase with a lot of Polo/Ralph Lauren stuff in private HS. By Jr. year I was over HS boys and didn't give a shit about clothes much by then either.
My oldest is 11.5yrs old and barely cares. She wears uniforms and is slightly clueless. My DD2 is 9 and definitely cares about fashion, hair & coolness. She'll be pushing DD1 along I think. They go to private school and wear uniforms until college so I'll buy them whatever they want for fun clothes.
Post by snipsnsnails on May 2, 2016 14:31:42 GMT -5
As everyone else said, pretty important.
My dad had the same system every year. The month before school started, he gave us a certain amount of money, took us to the mall and let us spend it on clothes. He didn't care if we blew it all on one thing, or bought 20 "cheap" things, he cared about the time, so we had 30 minutes in each store (usually 3 stores) and that was it. Heh.
My middle brother cared about labels and bought everything designer and took meticulous care of it. He still does. My oldest brother could care less and just bought whatever fit that he tried on first. Ha, he's still like that as well.
I was a hybrid - I would buy one or two staples that were designer and then supplement with thrifted things or things I made myself or just basics from a big box store like Wal-Mart or Sears or JC Penneys. (My mom taught me to sew early on).
My parents are the two people in the world that really just don't care what people think - not in a bad way, they just exude self-confidence, so we always tried to emulate them, sometimes with success, sometimes a big fat failure. Middle school was hard, for sure, but even if we had complained about something like that, our parents just wouldn't have "got it."
For parents now, have any of you thought to try garage sales and that type of thing for while your kids are growing, yet "everyone" has the insane costing Lebron shoes!
I shop our local Once Upon A Child like it's my job. My kids don't care about brands (and wear uniforms), but I love buying Gap jeans for $6.50, etc.
share.memebox.com/x/uKhKaZmemebox referal code for 20% off! DD1 "J" born 3/2003 DD2 "G" born 4/2011 DS is here! "H" born 2/2014 m/c#3 1-13-13 @ 9 weeks m/c#2 11-11-12 @ 5w2d I am an extended breastfeeding, cloth diapering, baby wearing, pro marriage equality, birth control lovin', Catholic mama.
I remember it being important in middle school. At that point, my parents couldn't afford a ton of name brand clothes, so I got a budget for each school year. My mom would let me go shopping with my friends (so I could find trendy things that were like what the other kids were wearing) and put stuff on hold and then she'd go back with me with the money later. I learned to stay in budget, I could get the not on sale pink Gap jeans that were all the rage when I was 12, but I'd have to balance it with shirts that were on sale. Luckily, for shirts, we were mostly into plain colored Ts or surf Ts and those could always be found on sale here at the beach.
In high school, I was really in to thrift store shopping, so that was way more budget-friendly for my parents.
It was pretty important when I was in middle school.
The kids here wear uniforms but they are into who hashas the best sneakers on. Kids walk around with Kanye West sneakers which cost $200. They are into Jordan's, Nike, Adidas and Puma right now. My dd is in high school now but it was the same in middle school.
I should add that my son is almost 10 and I did ask him if he wanted to pick out his own clothes this year (like try them on at the store instead of me asking what he might like and then going and finding it). He said yes. I asked what stores he wants to go to. He told me Old Navy. I have noticed that except for t-shirts, most of the kids he goes to school with wear Old Navy clothes. T-shirts tend to be from something they participated in or plain colors or someplace they went or a college/pro sports team.
It was the style that was important to me as a kid, not the name brand. I went to a pretty rural school though. Lots of legit farming families.
My H.S boyfriend went to a more urban school and when I met him, he was already in college and all his friends called him "Fakey" ( rhymed with his name) because he wore do knock off jacket or shoes in middle school. So 8 years later it still warranted a nickname.
Post by Balki.Bartokomous on May 2, 2016 15:05:22 GMT -5
It was important, but looking back at it now, I can see that even when I did try to fit in it didn't matter bc middle school kids were just looking for something to make fun of others about.
Even if I had Nikes or whatever was supposedly cool, I'd still get made fun of bc some frenemy declared that on that given day it was Adidas day or whatever. No amount of cool clothes would have changed that.
Super important. When I was in middle school, the most important thing to have were shoes and backpacks of a certain brand. My mom didn't care at all. So I had to wait for Christmas and I was saving my babysitting money. I won't do this to my kids.
I don't know if this is flameful or if I should be discouraging such shallowness, but I hope to be able to buy the girls more "cool" clothing and name brand stuff than I had as a kid.
My mom was never big into appearances and I felt like she didn't really understand or care why it was important to me.
I was coming in to post the same thing. I think it was 75% that she didn't get it/care and 25% that we couldn't have afforded it. But I didn't even want a ton! Like someone else said, just enough to blend in.
My mom too, only she also exerted a lot of control over my wardrobe under the guise of wanting to keep my sister and I from growing up too fast, so it wasn't until middle school, when I went bopping into eighth grade in a Betty Boop sweatshirt and was roundly criticized for it, that I realized that I had let her dress me for far too long.
It got slightly better by the time I was a junior in high school in that she at least started asking for my opinion before she paid for anything, but we still always had to stick to the clearance racks of the stores that she liked (so no Au Coton or Cavaricci for me!).
And I totally agree with @this that my shopping habits now for both myself and my children have been totally, fully formed by how this all played out when I was a kid.
If my kids care I'll work with them on clothing budget and non brand vs brand cost and hope they make good decisions. I guess that may be the point where I introduce Facebook buy and sell. I'll need to balance "we're not made of money" with "I don't want to make teen life harder than It has to be"
It was middle school for me. We could not afford nike level shoes and I was in Athletics. I was made fun of all the time. I also had Walmart clothes. It was less obvious than the name brand shoe.
Post by regencygirl on May 2, 2016 15:33:39 GMT -5
I wore a uniform all through school (Catholic school so it was just K-8 and then HS). Uniforms for the win! I wasn't popular in grade school, so didn't go to many of the CYO dances or anything, but I do remember being teased mercilessly for my knock off Converse for gym. Why we thought wearing Converse for athletics was a smart idea, I'll never know- gotta love the 90's! My shoes/gym bag got stolen a few times. In HS there was definitely a "way" you had to wear your uniform, skirt had to rolled just so (so if a nun yelled at us, we could pull it down quickly), had to have knee high socks pulled up - NO tights, ever, even in the middle of winter when it was fucking freezing. I was the tail end of the large cloth headbands and scrunchie era, so we got creative with those as well.
DS1 is 10 and is starting to become more brand/name conscience. He needed new cleats for soccer, and he was so dead set on getting Messi cleats he paid the difference between what we were prepared to spend and the cost of the cleats. He's still content to wear clothes from Target or Sears, but has been getting more into sports/team logos and such. He's asked for several jerseys of Premier Soccer players.
I let my mom dress me for way too long. I was picked on/bullied horribly in jr high for having horrible hair, horrible glasses, horrible skin, horrible clothes.
Needless to say, DH and I have agreed that we will stop at nothing to make sure Will fits in (at least on the exterior...we'll have work to do with his ASD/SPD/ADHD).
I wore a uniform for K-12, so it was sort of important, I guess. Around here, there are even uniform shoe rules, but when I was in school we could mostly choose what we wanted. Because I wore a uniform so much, I think I had enough babysitting money and my mom bought me some stuff to afford popular brands even though I didn't have a ton of quantity.
MH grew up in a much wealthier area, and was much more well off than I was, but he never gave a rip about what he wore and his mom bought all of his clothes until we got married for the most part. He also mostly wore a white t-shirt and jeans to school. Maybe a hoodie. Possibly because his mom bought such dorky clothes for him, and he just didn't care. But I kind of think it's different when you are naturally very self confident, your family is very well off, and you don't see your clothing as representing that you're poor.
My kids mostly have name brand stuff, with some target and old navy thrown in, but that's because I'm a shopaholic and it's my hobby. I'm good at finding deals, too. MH does give me shit about dressing Jackson like a dork, so I try to make sure I'm not dressing him too twee, especially now that he's 9. Jackson doesn't care though because he's color blind and oblivious to trends. He doesn't know the different between old navy active wear and UA. He's in 3rd so I expect that will probably change. He's also in man size shoes now, so lord help me.
Post by polarbearfans on May 2, 2016 15:57:31 GMT -5
I would say middle school more than anything. If you can, it would be awesome to get him something cool to wear. Shoes are huge right now. Even if the clothes are off brand, the right shoes will make up for it.
I'd agree that it's important. We were poor and my wardrobe was a combo of waaaay out of style hand-me-downs, Walmart $5 Ked knockoffs (at a time when Keds were decidedly uncool and old-ladyish) and stuff from Hill's clearance racks. I never really seemed to have the right clothes until I snagged a job at Old Navy in high school (at a time when Old Navy *was* cool).
As an adult, I'm fine with my cheap tshirts from Target, and my kiddo is okay with it, too. I know there's a time coming soon when he's going to be more opinionated and we'll buy him what he asks for, within reason.
Hmm, I honestly don't remember. I mean, it was obviously important, but it wasn't a HUGE deal. I think as long as you didn't shop at Zeller's, it was fine. I went to school in a very small town, so we had low standards. LOL. Oh, the girls loved to wear those jeans with the 1 inch zipper. I was too poor to even dream about owning a pair.
I think there was more pressure on the guys, to be honest. You were basically a loser if you didn't dress in skate brands.
Post by mccallister84 on May 2, 2016 16:30:35 GMT -5
Having worked in both middle and high school I would say extremely important. In my experience, middle school is all about fitting in, while high schoolers become a little bit more comfortable in their own skin. Plus there are many more opportunities for students in HS so students can more easily find their niche. Middle school is all about conformity.