The great shirt debate: house rules for boys?
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Anonymous
I'm not a fan of formality in our home. |
Anonymous
| Shirts are required at the dinner table. Shirts are required when non-family guests are over. Otherwise, wear whatever you want. |
Anonymous
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I'm a female only child, so I didn't grow up with boys around much.
My 2 boys like to go shirtless around the house, and it doesn't bother me at all. Dinnertime, a shirt is required...but that's my only shirt rule. (They choose to wear shirts when company comes over!) |
Anonymous
| Turn down the heat. |
Anonymous
Another one here. |
Anonymous
+1. I have girls, too, though they are younger than your children, OP. I only require underwear for hygiene purposes since my girls are always rolling around on the floor and like to go down our stairs on their bottoms. |
Anonymous
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OP: When your girls get older, they may be the ones telling their brothers to cover up. (Or you might have to figure out that the girls are uncomfortable and ask their brothers on their behalf.) Right now they're all pretty young, but as they all hit older ages they're all going to become much more self-conscious and girls -- however used to it they are now -- might find it weird later on to have their older brothers hanging out with no shirts on. Especially the first time a daughter brings home another girl after school one day unexpectedly, and the visitor asks why the brothers are "not dressed."
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Anonymous
Another ditto to this one. And shirts at the tables. The bigger side issue is that the discarded clothes must make it to the laundry basket. Right now, I find the clothes everywhere around the house! |
Anonymous
Us, too. The rule is that if you are in the living room or gaming room or the table for a meal, you must have underwear on. If you want to hang out naked in your room, so be it. |
Anonymous
| My boys like to go shirtless, too and my youngest loves to lounge around in just his underwear. They are 9 and 6, so right now I don't mind. If the youngest was a teen, I might not want to see him on the couch in his jockey shorts. I do make them clothes to the dinner table. I haven't completely given up. |
Anonymous
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What seems to be the husband's problem? Why does he see it as an issue/ Seriously.
Nothing wrong with boys being shirtless inside the house. |
Anonymous
| I gave up on shirts. My teen DS doesn't like to wear shorts or pants at home (he does wear boxers). So I have tried, mostly in vain, to have a shorts in public (with public defined as anywhere other than his room) rule. This is mostly a summer issue, not a winter issue. The rest of us are fully dressed. |
Anonymous
| I would suggest the house rules be focused on gaming and electronic time as that is a much bigger issue for most families of boys. |
Anonymous
| My kids are grown now. When my boys lived at home they were certainly not allowed to walk around the house without shirts on. How tacky! |
Anonymous
+1 Our rule is you need to wear underwear outside of the bathroom/your bedroom. Otherwise I don't really care and neither does DH. If other people are over, you need to wear clothes. |