Why is it that children go through clothes and shoes so quickly?
I appreciate the fact that they grow. This is a given. This is the part of the deal you sign up for when you agree to squeeze them out of your lady garden, but it’s the destruction they wreak upon things when they’re not having an inconvenient growth spurt I don’t understand.
And not only that, but if you have more than one child, they tend to indulge in this destruction in clumps. Why can’t they spread things out a bit more evenly? Just why?
I am not expecting an answer to this question by the way. It is purely rhetorical, but I feel the need to wail it into the wind anyway.
As an aside, Tallulah’s teacher asked if she could borrow the paint pot that was on Tallulah’s table last week. Tallulah looked at her and said: ‘Is that a rhetorical question? You’re going to take it anyway.’
To which the teacher, non plussed, replied: ‘Ahh, yes!’
And I say: ‘GET IN, Tallulah!’
Back to my original whinge.
The week before last, Matilda confessed that her shoes had a huge hole in the bottom, and that she had known this for some time, but had been walking about through puddles and quagmires regardless, but she was getting a bit tired of having permanently wet feet.
I asked her why she hadn’t bothered to tell me when she first found out. She just shrugged and twiddled her hair.
We bought her a new pair of shoes.
Last week she confessed that she had no socks left which weren’t more hole than sock, and that she had known she was running out for some time.
More shrugging and twiddling.
We bought her more socks.
Ditto bra tops; which looked like they had been savaged by wolves. I did not ask.
Last week Oscar came home wearing a pair of spare socks from the school lost property cupboard. I asked him why this was so. What ensued was an enormously complex tale which involved this boy, and that boy, and the carpet, and messy time, and a whole chain of events which linked together over the space of several hours to mean that he had wet socks and they needed to be changed.
The entirety of this story seemed to take place inside, so I told him to be more careful about where things were spilled, and went off into a dark corner to bang my head repeatedly against a wall for a refreshing change.
Today he trundled out of school with his shirt hanging out, his tie askew, his dinner in his hair and his cardigan crumpled into a ball in his hand. As I was generally tweaking his appearance, his lovely teacher appeared with some socks. He had wet his socks again, and was wearing school ones while his dried out on the radiator.
I put two and two together.
I asked him to show me the bottom of his shoes.
They were more hole than sole.
We spent half an hour in Asda on the way home from school cramming shoes onto his reluctant feet. I didn’t have time to go anywhere else, and he destroys everything, so cheap and cheerful is best until he can afford his own Loakes.
Tallulah then informed me that she has poured glue over a large portion of her dressing gown, and that she needs another one.
I got a bit terse.
We came home without a dressing gown.
You would think, given that I am nominally in charge of such things, and that I am the chief laundress etc, that I would notice this holey, ramshackle mess.
But I do not.
Not because I can’t, but because I won’t.
Mostly it is so depressing, what they do to their clothes. Things like a) eating their sleeves, b) wiping their noses on any bit of clothing they can find c) pouring paint over themselves, d) standing on trouser ends until they are just ragged, flapping holes, e) losing items of clothing, f) lending items of clothing, g) coming back home with someone else’s clothing, or on several memorable occasions, someone else’s shoes, in the wrong size.
I just resign myself to the fact that everything is ashes and dust, and when things get bad enough that even they can’t stand it any more, they will confess.
This puts off quite a lot of pointless shouting and anxiety on my part, and probably explains why I still haven’t succumbed to an ulcer yet.
I just cannot get worked up about whether they are wearing a matching pair of socks, because generally they aren’t, and life is too short and full of woe to argue the toss over it, when, as far as I know, no major world calamities have been set off by a person’s failure to wear matching socks.
I don’t care if they decide to wear a dress, trousers, leggings and a trilby all at once. If they can put up with the ridicule I say go right ahead. I did, way back in the day.
I do not care if they look crumpled. They can look like a band box, and then five minutes afterwards they always look like Pig Pen anyway, so why sweat about it in the first place?
I do not care if they choose to wear colours that clash, or things which are not fashionable, or boys clothes if they are girls, or girls clothes if they are boys.
Until they went to school I didn’t care if they wore any clothes at all.
I appreciate that people can love clothes. I have clothes I love myself. My children have favourite items of clothing that have to be wrenched from them in order to put them in the washing machine.
What I don’t appreciate is grown ups making their children wear things that the grown up believes are appropriate, even if the child doesn’t give two hoots, mainly because the parent thinks the world is judging them if their child happens to want to go to nursery dressed as a spoon.
Sod what the rest of the world thinks.
I don’t care if your child wears head to foot Prada or head to foot Oxfam. And what I would think if you went down the Prada route is not: ‘Wow! What an amazing parent you are, and what a wonderful life you must lead.’ No! Mainly I would think: ‘Are you bonkers? The first time they go up a tree in that, you’ll be fooked.’ Followed by: ‘Think of all the books you could have bought with the difference if you’d kitted them out from Tesco.’
As long as my children are roughly appropriately clad, and they’re not freezing or boiling to death, I don’t care. As long as their clothes are clean and don’t need to be cracked with a toffee hammer for them to wear them, I don’t care.
As long as they are fairly happy, I don’t care.
They have all the time in the world to get into fashion when they can pay for it themselves. I am happy to wait for the day when the desire to wear matching socks overwhelms them, and they get with the programme. If that day doesn’t come I won’t feel cheated.
This attitude, as well as saving me from having to get into numerous fights with stubborn children over the years, also means that I do not have to rush out to buy the latest fashions, because my children don’t care about fashion. By fashion I mean that they show no desire to wear what everyone else is wearing, rather than having profound opinions on Jean Paul Gaultier’s wisdom at doing an Amy Winehouse themed catwalk show.
They wear what they like, when they like (except when they are at school, and look at the anguish adhering to school uniform causes me). The only things I am a stickler for are clean underwear and not freezing to death because they think it is a good idea to wear a halter neck bikini top and a tutu outside in January. I also object to items of attire which look so far from what they started out life as that they are unrecognisable, and unfit for purpose.
Otherwise they do as they please with regard to their clothes, and I’m sure it shows in their slightly eccentric, slightly crumpled appearances.
But what the hell?
I grumble about how many pairs of shoes, socks, bras etc I have had to replace over the last three weeks, but just imagine if I insisted that everything matched, and wasn’t slightly grey, and was the right size, and was appropriate for their age? I’d never have any money for books, and that would never do.
Being a bit anal retentive most of my boys clothes were within a colour spectrum that any combination worked which assuaged my soul but catered for letting them chose. It was probably also fortunate I only had boys. Elder son would pick and chose his outfits with care, outgrow his clothes at fairly regular intervals and they would duly be packed up and passed on to my sisters’ boys pretty much in pristine condition (and people wondered why I expressed no surprise when he came out!!!). MM’s clothes were generally in need of repair within a week of purchase and he seldom grew out of anything before replacement was needed. His school trousers were always darned and patched in a vain attempt to get more than 6 weeks wear but half term would usually see me buying more uniform. Summer term was handy in that I could just chop the legs off his trousers and turn them into shorts and buy an extra supply of sticking plasters. I don’t think that of his clothing beyond the first 6 months of his life was passed on to anyone.
It is Tallulah who is the most destructive when it comes to clothes. She is a genius at tearing giant holes in things. It is most distressing.
MM’s Grammar-School-with-pretensions compulsory to be worn every day blazer didn’t survive the first week intact. Day two he came home with a small rip in one elbow. I mended it with standard rebukes. Day four, one entire pocket hanging by a thread or two. I mended it with additional dire warnings. Day five, the house badge carefully sewn to the top pocket was partly detached. I re-stitched it and issued death threats. Naturally he had no idea how any of this damage happened and was most surprised when it was pointed out to him! Said blazer cost over twenty hard-earned pounds back in 1994 so not cheap plus the cost of the appropriate badge. Fortunately after that only minor damages were sustained. He just really prefers the lived-in, dragged-through-a -hedge-backwards look. Sadly the school didn’t. Possibly the only saving grace was that straw boaters were not on the extensive uniform list.
I enjoyed dressing my boys in cute little outfits when they were quite small, but stopped doing so pretty much as soon as they started walking and being filthy all the time. Like you, I let them decide what they wore as long as it was seasonally appropriate and clean. Son#2 had strong opinions about his clothes, refusing to wear things that he did not deem ‘cool’ (which changed daily and did not seem to be based on any logic I could figure out) so he often went out dressed very strangely. The worst (at least with boys) was the dressy clothes – things that they wore only rarely, say to church at Easter or for a concert or something., I always tried to make sure the child in question tried on the whole ensemble the night before, but there was one instance when Son#1 (then aged 13 or so) airily assured me that his clothes fit just fine the night before his church youth group’s handbell concert. At 8am(he had to be there at 8:30) he (we) discovered that his trousers had been outgrown to the extent they could not be zippered or buttoned. He attended the concert wearing the trousers in question held up with a belt(but wide open, of course) and with his polo shirt untucked and hanging over the whole offending mess although they were at least an inch too short and still looked ridiculous in the ankle area. Fortunately, 1) the director of the group was a good friend of mine and thought it was hilarious and 2) handbell ringers stand behind tables when they perform, so the audience couldn’t see that he looked like a hobo. On the plus side, Son #1 was sufficiently embarrassed by the experience to avoid such things in the future and today is actually quite the fashionable dude, much to our surprise, since he was such a grub as a youngster.
MsCaroline
That is a lovely story. I wonder if mine are capable of that level of embarrassment.
Mostly they are so busy thinking they are the centre of the universe they don’t have time to worry about what others think of their clothing choices.
Just come across your blog and what a splendid post, hear hear. My small person has firm views about what he wears, has done since before he was one and I long ago concluded that arguing with him was a pointless waste of reading time.
And GET IN Tallulah!
Exactly what I thought!