What I Learned When My Kid Asked Why I Don’t Wear Cool Stuff Like Mom
It was 7:45 a.m. on a rainy Saturday, and we were 12 minutes out from my 7-year-old Leo’s U8 soccer kickoff. I was shoving granola bars into my backpack and pulling on the same faded gray college hoodie I’ve owned since graduation, when Leo looked up from tying his neon cleats by the front door and blurted it out: “Dad, how come you never wear cool stuff like Mom does?”
Mom had picked up a cropped black leather jacket for a work conference the week before, and she’d worn it to my sister’s birthday dinner two nights prior. Leo had watched three different people compliment her on it before we got our appetizers, so the observation made sense. Mom keeps a rotating rack of fun earrings, buys new jeans when the old ones get too stretched out, and actually enjoys putting together an outfit that makes her feel good. I buy the same straight-leg jeans every five years, when the old ones develop a hole at the knee that can’t be patched anymore, and 90% of my t-shirts are free handouts from 5K runs and my company’s annual picnic.
My first reaction was a quick huff of laughter, then a tiny, unexpected twinge – the same twinge I remember feeling when I was 12 and embarrassed by my dad’s beat-up work boots and constant frayed flannel shirts. I almost brushed it off, almost said “That’s just how Dad dresses” and herded him out the door. But we had eight extra minutes waiting for the rain to lighten up, so I sat down on the entryway bench next to him and asked, “What makes Mom’s stuff cool?”
“She’s got that shiny jacket, and those boots with the silver buckles, and everyone says she looks nice,” he counted off on his fingers. “You just wear the same gray shirt every single day.”
I didn’t get defensive. I’ve never been much into clothes, and that’s my choice, not a burden. But I realized in that moment that Leo wasn’t being rude. He was seven, just starting to connect what he sees on TV, what he hears at school, and what goes on in our house into a set of unspoken rules about how the world works. Ads tell him cool clothes make cool people. His classmates compare sneaker brands on the playground. He was just asking the obvious question that popped into his head.
Instead of giving him a lecture about how clothes don’t matter, I pulled the elbow of my hoodie over to show him. “See this frayed hole here?” I said. “That happened when we climbed that big oak tree at the park last summer, remember? You got your kite stuck 20 feet up, I reached up to grab it and caught my sleeve on a broken branch. I could’ve thrown this hoodie out after that, but why would I? It reminds me of that day.” I flipped open my jeans leg to show him the faint blue paint stain on the knee, from when we built birdhouses for the backyard over spring break. “This is from that project. Every stain and hole here is from something I got to do with you or your mom. That’s why I like wearing them.”
I told him that Mom likes her cool stuff because getting dressed up is fun for her. It makes her feel confident when she’s giving presentations at work, and she likes picking out pieces that fit her style. It’s not that one of us is right and the other is wrong – we just pick clothes that work for the things we care about most.
Leo thought about that for a minute, then hopped up and flipped through the bin of hoodies by the door. He pulled out my beat-up dinosaur hoodie, the one I wear to movie nights, that got covered in popcorn butter when we saw Super Mario Bros. last month. “Oh yeah,” he said. “This one’s cool ‘cause we got popcorn on it.” He tied his cleats, we ran out to the car, and the conversation was over for the day. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
A lot of parents I know panic when their kids start commenting on clothes or status. They worry their kid is turning into a snob, or that they’re doing something wrong because they can’t afford designer stuff, or because they just don’t care about fashion. But what this moment taught me is that these offhand questions are just opportunities to name your values out loud, in terms a kid can actually understand.
I don’t do big talks about consumerism with a seven-year-old. But I do use these small moments to be specific. If your kid asks why you don’t wear new stuff like other parents, you don’t have to get defensive or go out and buy something new. You can just point to the things your clothes already carry: the stain from the camping trip, the hole from helping your neighbor fix their fence, the reason you shop secondhand because you don’t like wasting things. It’s also an easy opening to talk about what actually makes someone interesting, not what they wear. After our chat, we started a silly little habit at dinner some nights: we go around and name one thing that’s cool about each person that has nothing to do with clothes. It takes two minutes, and it’s a small way to push back against all the messages kids get every day that what you look like is who you are.
It’s not like we’ve fixed anything forever. Last week, Leo came home and asked if he could get the new neon soccer cleats all his friends have, when his current pair still fit him fine and have zero holes. I told him no, we’d get new ones when these are too small, and he shrugged it off. A month ago, he heard me say that, and he would’ve thrown a fit. Progress is small, right? He’s still going to notice what other people have, he’s still going to ask awkward questions, and I’m still going to wear the same gray hoodie every Saturday. That’s just how it goes.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What I Learned When My Kid Asked Why I Don’t Wear Cool Stuff Like Mom