I used to care a whole lot about the way my boys dressed. I would doll them up for family pictures and make sure their hair was just right or, if they’d slept on it wrong, I’d toss a really cute hat on top of the mess. I worked hard to make sure they had matching shoes—not just shoes of the same color and style but shoes that actually matched their outfits and complemented each other. I matched their socks and sometimes even their underwear.
No, I never went that far, because half the time my boys weren’t wearing underwear in the first place.
When I look back at all these early family pictures, which depict our stylishness and prove that I was not always dressed in workout clothes, I miss them a little. Husband and I made it look like we actually had it together. I’d like to look like I have it together every now and then.
But then I think about how much time it takes to get boys to actually care about the way they look, and I think, nah, it’s not worth the effort.
I have friends who are newer parents than Husband and me, because we started a little early, and these parents spike up their kids’ hair and dress them all cute for every single circumstance you can imagine, and when I see those cute little boys dressed by their parents, I think to myself that they’ll give it up in a few years, too. Eight years of parenting and all the battles and challenges that come with it have made me something akin to apathetic when it comes to what my kids wear. Now I’m just glad they walk out the door wearing matching shoes—and half the time one 4-year-old can’t even manage that, which he’ll point out to every teacher in the kindergarten hallway as we drop his older brother off at school.
This morning, on the way to school, this particular child, who is a twin, wore one flip flop and one tennis shoe—not because he couldn’t find the matching shoes but because he wanted to. The 7-year-old wore shoes that his two biggest toes poked through, even though he has perfectly fine tennis shoes that don’t have holes at all. When I pointed this out, because I didn’t want his teacher to think that we’re in such a bad state that we can’t get him adequate shoes, he said he preferred these shoes, because they left a little breathing room for his feet. I said, fine, do whatever you want, but don’t call me when the soles fall off.
It flapped all the way to school.
Occasionally I marvel at this strange person I have become. The person I used to be would never, ever have agreed to let her child, essentially a representation of herself, walk outside the house like that. Now I feel perfectly fine allowing a boy to walk out the door in a navy blue and cerulean striped shirt with bright green pants that have gaping holes in the knees, because there are much more important battles I will have to fight during the day. I don’t care if a kid goes to school in two left shoes. I don’t care if a kid woke up with Einstein hair that they didn’t even try to comb. I don’t care if they wear shorts on a 30-degree day. They are in charge of their own wardrobe.
Full disclosure, I do still make an effort for family pictures. We’re paying for those things, and I don’t want them to go down in history as proof that we were drowning beneath waters of our own making.
For the everyday, no family pictures dressing, my kids look like feral felines who thought they’d take a stab at wearing clothes. I try not to let it bother me. Every now and then I have to draw a line. My 5-year-old has this workout shirt that’s a pretty blue color. It looks really good on him with his naturally tan skin, but he has worn it so often that now it looks like it’s been dragged through a pile of mud even after I’ve scrubbed it with dish soap (which is my eco-friendly solution for stain remover) and washed it. There are stains on this shirt that will never come out. So when he puts it on, I always tell him to change. He can wear it around the house, but not to church or school.
The other day, Husband attempted a talk with the 9-year-old about the proper dress for church, because we’ve gotten a little lax about the appropriate attire now that we’re working for one that requires extensive travel on Sunday mornings and we have to get up early.
Husband: From now on, you need to wear shoes to church, not flip flops.
9-year-old: Okay.
Husband: And also no sweat pants with holes in them.
9-year-old: Okay. And I should probably also wear underwear.
Well, yes, that would be nice.
But, you see, these are the kinds of things that I’ve stopped caring so much about. Because there are so many other things to care about. Like their hearts and how they feel about what happened at school today and whether there are any concerns that they have about friends or bullies. I don’t have the time or energy to spend my days caring about what they look like when they walk out of the house. Soon enough, they’ll all care about the way they look, and then we’ll never find our way back to that innocent time of early childhood when they thought that sweat pants paired with a button-up shirt qualified as dressing up. And I don’t think I’m quite ready to leave that time yet, because leaving it will be an arriving of sorts. They get to remain children as long as they don’t care about what they look like, but as soon as they start caring what they look like, they become young men. I want to enjoy the childhood. So I’ve loosened my grip on this.
If they want to look like a fashion experiment gone wrong, so be it. After all, most days I look like I just finished at the gym. In fact, to most of the parents at my boys’ school, I probably look like I do nothing else but spend time at the gym.
Well, except for the few extra pounds I carry around.
This is an excerpt from This Life With Boys, the third book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by This is Now Photography.)
