Do you let your kids wear character shirts?
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Anonymous
Thanks, but I'm not trolling. Have you ever seen a daycare descend on a park? It is quite a scene. The older kids are walking single file attached to a rope like a preschool chain gang. The younger kids are pushed along in these passive wagons that can hold around 12 toddlers. And they are all disheveled, dirty, and wearing a horrid mishmash of cartoon characters. I'm sure it is hard to get kids up and out in the morning while the adults get ready for work. But, how can people not have even a modicum of pride in what their kids look like when out of the house? |
Anonymous
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DS wore more character stuff when he was younger but I'm talking about small sized retro Star Wars & band shirts (ex: The Beatles) and then his favorite baseball team. Not talking about Elmo or whatever kids were watching when he was in pre-school.
Now its mostly just relegated to his favorite baseball team or plain tees or Supreme/streetwear brands but he's 13. I did make it a habit to not fill his wardrobe with random character tees when he was little but I think that has to do with the fact that I never let him watch a ton of TV. I think the Elmo and Paw Patrol requests come because that's what young kids do for hours (even before the pandemic). That's far more déclassé as the OP likes to say: turning the TV on as soon as you walk in the door for background noise and it stays on all day including meals and until everyone goes to bed. Yuck. |
Anonymous
Pick your battles hon. If this battle get to rise to the top of your list, consider yourself fortunate. |
Anonymous
No battles. My kids were taught our family's expectations from an early age. |
Anonymous
Nobody is paying attention to your post, you're not allowed to bring common sense or reason into the DCUM mommy class wars. 
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Anonymous
Poor kids |
Anonymous
The prevalence of the mindset that having standards for our children is bad is why the country is stumbling towards mediocrity, if not worse. |
Anonymous
No it's the prevalence of the attiude that some people are more deserving of respect based on their economic status or how valuable you perceive them to be. |
Anonymous
This is true, and this terrifies you which is why you are so controlling. I too toed the line as a middle schooler when it came to my narcissistic mother's demands. |
Anonymous
Your kids hate you. Their spouses will undoubtedly hate you as well. We’ll probably read their complaints about you in the Family Relationships forum someday 😉 |
Anonymous
| I was taught my family's expectations at an early age as well, and never wore anything so "awful" as character shirts...until I was in my 40s. Take that, stringent standards. |
Anonymous
| My parents were lower middle class growing up and were very cheap as a result. I had no name brand or character anything. I had solid color and lightly patterned plain clothes from K-Mart and from second hand stores/yard sales, that could mostly work for both boys and girls and could be handed down when I was done with them. So no. I buy my kids whatever makes them happy because I never had that when I was growing up. Believe me I would have LOVED a Mickey or Minnie Mouse shirt or a cool graphic tee when I was 4 years old. |
Anonymous
Lol. But not the other half? It’s fine to have clothes that make your kid happy. I have little kids, and they’re very active, and they play outside constantly in grass and dirt and streams. Their clothes get messed up, stained, and quickly outgrown. I don’t want to invest in expensive clothes that “can be worn a long time”, because they will not be worn a long time. So if Target has a bunch of relatively good quality shirts that are $10 and they have a Batman symbol on them...who cares? My kids aren’t little dolls for me to accessorize in the exact way that I want because I’m anxious about what someone will think of me if they aren’t curated “just so”. They’re kids. They like what they like. And I think it’s unhealthy to prevent them from having at least some level of autonomy in how they dress. |
Anonymous
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I used to be very against character tees. I was a young mom with my older two, and I didn't want people to judge me even harder than I believed they already were so they wore very classic styles.
As they got older, seeing the unbridled joy they felt when I finally relented and bought them their favorite superhero tees, made me say, screw it, they are only little once, let them wear what they want. They are teenagers now and refuse to wear anything overly branded or character related, so yea, that stage is definitely short. I love looking back and pictures and thinking, oh that's when he loved Jurassic Park, or that's when he was obsessed with Captain America. I typically buy my youngest a few character tees of whatever he is into at the moment, and he regularly grabs for non-character shirts and polos... go figure! |
Anonymous
NP. My kids have never worn character shirts or shirts with words on them. I think they are ugly and my kids never asked for them. They did have some Hanna Andersson pajamas that had Disney princesses on them but they weren't that into them. I never dragged my kids away from the shirts while they cried - I just never offered them up and they never asked. It's a bit ridiculous (and rude, frankly) of you to make the kind of negative assumptions you did about people who might not like character shirts. Also, there's nothing wrong with therapy. |