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Now, your kid's classmates might notice. But 30 years from now? It won't matter.
Edit: and you don't want to spend $150 on tennis shoes just to have them get stolen. Nobody will steal $12 tennis shoes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke
I've seen photos of movie star kids dressed cute with a note that the outfit the kid had on cost thousands of dollars. My reaction was "Really? I could dress my kid to look just like that at K-Mart and get in in under $30 for the entire outfit."
A lot of time high fashion can be copied for low cost, if it really matters to you.
Mindraker's note about $150 tennis shoes being stolen: too often the victim who gets his shoes stolen is injured during the theft, or is even killed.
As a parent, I'd view keeping my kids out of a neighborhood where he's likely to be robbed for his shoes as a high priority, generally, even if it meant being forced to shop at goodwill for clothes to enable me affording somewhere else.
Practically speaking, I went to a birthday party at Chuck-e-Cheese when I was a kid. You had to take your shoes off for the ball pit. Mine disappeared. I still remember how mad my dad was. I don't know, in retrospect, if he was mad at me, or what. We went back and he talked to the manager, who was like "what do you want me to do about it, sorry?"
I didn't have $150 shoes, but had decent tennis shoes as would be appropriate for a kid. I don't know if they were just taken by a kid accidentally, or on purpose, or if a parent decided to upgrade.
To me...it's all so relative. To someone, me buying a second pair of sneakers at Walmart would seem extravagant compared to someone making sandals out of rubber tires, and being glad for the rubber tire, you know?
It's kind of like telling a kid to clean their plate cause there are starving children in China, or Botswana, or wherever.
I never appreciated how materialistic many native southerners are. My theory is that the COL is generally lower but more importantly flatter across an area (ie the county), therefore more emphasis is placed on other more instantly visible cues of success or "good breeding" or whatever.
Where I grew up, there was a lot less of that, because it was relatively understood simply by where you lived.[/QUOTE
Actually, traditionally in the South, it wasn't so much what you wore or where you lived as it was "who your people" were.
For generations, lots of well-connected Southerners dressed inconspicuously on modest budgets and similarly had modest but meticulously kept older homes (often ancestral homes for several generations) in "respectable" neighborhoods - but you can bet the family silver was kept polished, as were the family stories. The paint might be peeling and the upholstery frayed, but the windows were washed, the grass got mowed and Grandma's roses continued to grace the garden.
This was in the "too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash" era that began to change big-time in the 1950s. Better-off, more flamboyantly fashionable newcomers minus family connections could never break through into those inner social circles, something that was difficult for them to understand. Flashy displays of wealth were not the criteria for social success in the post-War South, and that POV lasted a very long time in many places.
My kid was so rough on clothing that it would have been a huge waste of money to buy him designer anything. No matter what an item cost he could have it looking like a thrift store reject in about three days.
Although I never had to buy blue jeans for years. Sears guaranteed that nobody could wear through the knees of their toughskin jeans, so every couple of months I would take in the toughskins with huge holes worn in the knees and they let me trade them in for the next size up. It was a sad day when they discontinued that guarantee. Those were good looking jeans and most kids couldn't damage the knees so Sear probably did quite well by offering that guarantee, they just didn't allow for kids like mine.
When he hit school, though, he wanted the same clothing that the other kids wore with the right label. It was a high income school district and I couldn't afford to buy what he wanted, not as fast as he grew and as hard as he was on clothing. So I learned to stretch and sew and let him pick out fabric and he got custom made shirts that he was proud to wear and that nobody else could have.
I never skimped on shoes though. His feet were an odd size and I spent a heck of a lot of money buying shoes that fit right that he grew out of in 5-6 weeks. Proper fitting shoes are important for a growing child. Fortunately, there was an "in" skateboard shoe that fit his feet properly, so that is what he wore and I gritted my teeth and paid for them..
LOL when I read this! Having raised two girls, I was NOT prepared for the wear and tear my two grandsons put their clothes through. Oldest grandson puts out the knees on every pair of pants he owns (including PJ's), making them unfit to hand down to his younger brother. He got two pairs of "Minecraft" PJ's for Christmas, and the pants are already shredded. The same with the "Harry Potter" ones he got for his birthday. DD stores oldest grandson's clothes (the ones that are intact anyway) in plastic bins and every six months or so I sort through them to find what fits his little brother. Lots of shorts for this summer made it through, though (because they don't have knees).
Don't get me started on what he does to his shirts. He has to wear a uniform for school, and every single one of his uniform shirts has a gnawed collar...he has a habit of chewing on his shirt collars. His little brother is starting at the same school in the fall, and we've been looking over grandson's outgrown uniforms to see what we could hand down...zilch as far as pants, and only a couple of the uneaten shirts.
Not to say that girls don't ruin clothes. I do remember one Christmas that my mother gave oldest DD, then aged five, (the mother of the aforementioned boys) a handmade WHITE track suit, a hoodie and pants, designed and sewed by a co-worker of hers. We were on our way to spend the holidays at my in-laws, and oldest DD was wearing it (my huge mistake). My sister in law and I left our kids with their dads and my bachelor brother in law at his place while we did some last minute shopping. BIGGER mistake. While we were gone, DH and brothers in law let the kids go out to play in the muddy back yard. DD in the expensive custom made WHITE track suit. You get the picture.
Last edited by Mrs. Skeffington; 06-13-2021 at 04:44 AM..
A lot of people here seem to think that an outfit that looks “nice” equals “expensive.” I admit, my husband and I may be those people that look down on families whose kids are dressed (or not dressed) a certain way, but only because it doesn’t cost any more to have a child look nice and presentable. As others here have mentioned, a trip to a second hand shop, clothing swap, or family hand-me-downs can get your kids nice looking clothes without the dollar signs. So comb your child’s hair, wash their face, and pop them in a collared shirt. Done.
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