Adventures in Neurotic Parenting

~ Laura

Every day there’s a new drama around here. What’s the parenting gossip? WELL, let me tell ‘ya.

First, there’s the annoying uniform that jocks wear in school. We actually have a ruder word for the jocks in this house that I won’t share on this blog. The jocks are even more annoying than the jocks that I dealt with in high school, because they are rich jocks. And they all wear super preppy, pink shorts that cost $80. I suppose this isn’t a new thing, but we’ve had a lot of discussions about those stupid pink shorts lately.

Then there’s the rampant stress in our town. It’s hard to be spawn of super successful types who are hysterical that their children will never find a job after college. There’s lots of buzz about all the suicide attempts (and suicide successes) around here.

Then we had a little gun scare this week. A bunch of kids in town started using a new social media app called YikYak. It’s a social media app that lets people post anonymously with people in the same geographic location. There was some bullying going on, but the real problem happened when someone told the group that he was going to bring a gun to school next week. A full police presence in the school. Robo-calls from the superintendent.

Homeschooling or leg irons for my son until 18?

Published by Laura

43 thoughts on “Adventures in Neurotic Parenting”

  1. Embroidered whales are back in fashion? I’m sort of glad about that. Anyway, we just had an in-school mass knifing down the road. No fatalities, but lots of injuries. It doesn’t seem to have created much lasting furor. Or maybe I’m oblivious.

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    1. I think mass assault in high schools becomes a bigger deal when your kids are in HS. I feel like I’m on a threshold right now, where how well I can protect my children by controlling their environment is falling off a cliff.

      In our neck of the woods (in addition to worry about where kids are going to college and high school) there’s drugs. There are rumblings that marijuana use might be up (though it’s hard to be sure, since it might just have become less subterranean.). There was a private school scandal in which middle schoolers were expelled for dealing drugs (they’d agreed to act as carriers for HS students). The stories are sad, because the kids were poor, and, one fears, participated in order to raise money for the shorts (or whatever they’re wearing here).

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  2. MH said:

    “Anyway, we just had an in-school mass knifing down the road.”

    Oh my goodness.

    We just had a ne’er-do-well elected to the school board who owes A LOT of child support to a woman he got pregnant years ago when she was a minor. Also, funnily enough, what there is of his employment history suggests a preference for jobs that involve a lot of one-on-one contact with teenagers.

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  5. What’s your view on the $80 shorts? Does J want them? And, what is your response: 1) no way 2) if you earn the money 3) OK. Or something different.

    80 dollar shorts are in our budget. The equivalent, at least at the beginnig of the year, was lululemon leggings, overpriced clothes that are the trend d’jour. Our kid, who takes ideological positions on these things, said no to lululemon, on trendiness grounds, and because she takes pride in not running with the crowd. If she’d wanted them, we probably would have bought them.

    Also, are you allowed to wear the shorts if you’re not a rich jock? Or do they have mechanisms in place to prevent that (money itself plays a role, of course, but there could also be significant social pressure). I’ve sometimes wondered if one can undermine these trends by supplying shorts to the rest of the school.

    I do respect my kiddo for not joining the trend, ’cause it gives some cover to those who can’t afford the trend or can’t participate for other reasons. There are other parents who say no on principle (which also helps add to the cover).

    (The halter dresses for the girls are cute, though, at that site).

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      1. My kiddo, too. But, she doesn’t dislike the girls in the lululemon always (some days more than others), just their obsession with clothes. The size of the school makes it impossible to just have nothing to do with them, which is a cost of not being at a big public school. When subgroups like this grow in a small school, there can be no avoiding them.

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  6. bj said:

    “Or do they have mechanisms in place to prevent that (money itself plays a role, of course, but there could also be significant social pressure). I’ve sometimes wondered if one can undermine these trends by supplying shorts to the rest of the school.”

    Maybe it’s like the star-bellied sneetches.

    Hey, Laura, this isn’t your thing, but could we do a thread sometime on the problem of dressing the tween or teen girl who is outgrowing children’s sizes? My oldest is just about to leave the comfort of Landsend’s children’s catalog, and I’m having trouble coaxing her into Old Navy stuff, which while soft and comfy, is often kinda drab. (Justice has some suitable sizes, but it’s just so SPARKLY.)

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    1. I’d love that – my girl is still find with Lands End and loves Justice but other alternatives would be great.

      AmyP – there’s that fine balance of having some Justice but not TOO much Justice (my eyes, my eyes).

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      1. Jonah is about 5’8″ now and it’s all arms and legs. No torso. About 110 pounds. He’s built like an Iowa farmer. I have no idea what size he is.

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      3. Ah yes, the fun growing boy stage, where their pants are always too short, ’cause they grow out of them on the way home from the store.

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      4. I saw a t-shirt at Justice with the text, “Be yourself, but if you can be a unicorn, be a unicorn!” which I thought was awesome, but I just couldn’t bring myself to bring something into our home that violated so many rules about color combinations and tastefulness.

        Our sixth grader also has a Justice Minecraft t-shirt that she loves that is somehow not sparkly. She’s growing out of it. *sniff*

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    2. My girl has grown into adult sizes now (which has its own issues of cost and comfort), but the in between stage was difficult. I did not find any good replacements for the Lands End equivalent. There is Hannah Anderson, NEXT (NextDirect), Mini Boden, which you haven’t mentioned, and might be worth checking out. J Crew can be nice, too, but it’s certainly expensive. But, a lot depends on how a child is growing out of the clothes. We cobbled together solutions until the sizes/age worked for adult clothes.

      GAP shirts & dresses were very small, even in the largest size, and they were outgrown most quickly (I still have a beautiful set of tanks, with beaded embroidery, that she never got to wear because they were too small from the beginning).

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  7. Thank goodness, my daughter went to a school with uniforms. Now that she’s in college, though, she hangs out with lots of guys who wear shorts like these. I’m sure she would be happy if I bought some, but I’m not sure about my wife. She likes preppy guys, but not always preppy clothes.

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    1. My 8 year old has school uniforms too and it is SUCH the equalizer – the families in her school range from 1/3 who are on subsidy to probably 1/3 who are quite wealthy.

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      1. My 8 year old has school uniforms too and it is SUCH the equalizer

        This last year, through my work, I’ve worked w/ first-graders who come in for tutoring in reading. (Many things could be said about this program, but that’s not the main point here.) The kids go to a public school in an area that’s in North Philadelphia. (We visited the school last week for the end of the program.) There is a uniform program in place, but it’s imperfectly followed, with, many times, the least well take care of kids (all of them are poor) having the hardest time following it- they end up with no conforming clothes that are even remotely clean, because the laundry hasn’t been done for two weeks, or things like that. So, then they just wear normal clothes. I suspect this soft uniform policy is still better than the alternatives in most ways, but it doesn’t fully eliminate the ways that the less fortunate can be singled out, sadly enough.

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      2. My 8 year old has school uniforms too and it is SUCH the equalizer – the families in her school range from 1/3 who are on subsidy to probably 1/3 who are quite wealthy.

        It sure isn’t the equalizer on my budget!! My daughter’s middle school had a semi-uniform (polos and slacks); it’s going to be GREAT to revert back to the just-wear-what-you-normally-do policy at the high school. Buying ONE wardrobe is going to save some major bucks around here, especially since she’s still growing. Uniforms suck. (also: the uniform policy is an SES marker in my district—only the poor and working class middle schools have them. The rich (UMC) kids get to wear whatever they want. The kids (translation: my daughter and her equally opinionated friends) seem to take it as a message of low expectations, since the stark contrast is rich kids getting to wear “normal clothes” just like they will in their professional jobs, while the poor kids (translation from their middle-school-ese: this includes working class) have to wear the “you want fries with that?” type of uniform. They resent the hell out of the unequal treatment.)

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      3. lubiddu said:

        “It sure isn’t the equalizer on my budget!!”

        Our kids’ private school has uniforms, and while buying new uniforms is prohibitive, the school runs a uniform closet for used stuff where you can buy and sell at extremely reasonable prices. I’ve also periodically gotten free stuff from friends and given free stuff to friends. Also, thanks to some of the stuff being unisex, I’ve been able to pull off the tricky feat of doing hand-me-downs between my big girl and her little brother. (Our uniform code is WAY too complicated, though–if the system were less elaborate, it would be way cheaper. Also, $8 embroidered logos for the new stuff!)

        “My daughter’s middle school had a semi-uniform (polos and slacks); it’s going to be GREAT to revert back to the just-wear-what-you-normally-do policy at the high school.”

        We have a lot of doctors’ kids at school as well as some less posh families, so I think the contrasts would be pretty painful if the high school did not have a uniform. (The high school girls kind of look like flight attendants with their jackets and school scarves, but I am keeping that observation to myself.)

        True story: I overheard one highschooler telling another student the sad, sad story of yet a third student who had been PROMISED mom’s Mercedes SUV, but then mom and dad reneged and the student was stuck with grandma’s old Buick.

        “Uniforms suck. (also: the uniform policy is an SES marker in my district—only the poor and working class middle schools have them. The rich (UMC) kids get to wear whatever they want. The kids (translation: my daughter and her equally opinionated friends) seem to take it as a message of low expectations, since the stark contrast is rich kids getting to wear “normal clothes” just like they will in their professional jobs, while the poor kids (translation from their middle-school-ese: this includes working class) have to wear the “you want fries with that?” type of uniform. They resent the hell out of the unequal treatment.)”

        Uniforms are a bipolar phenomenon–you find them either at the bottom or at the top, but not in the middle (at least not in the US).

        Also, now that I think of it, the Soviet Union had school uniforms and many other communist countries did, too.

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      4. The families who receive a tuition subsidy (1/3 of them) receive free used/almost new uniforms as well. In other words, the students themselves come from families who range from poor to working class to middle class to rich. This is all in one school.

        I’m sorry they are seen in your area as a marker of poor and working class schools.

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  8. Last year, I drove my son and a friend to Philadelphia for a college visit, and no lie, on the way down they talked about Oakley sunglasses models for thirty minutes, which Sperry shoes they liked best for another twenty and then moved onto Vineyard Vines. They had their graduation money spent in February….

    I’m sure there were parents at the school that bought that stuff as a matter of course, but my son and his friends worked and saved birthday money for them. They are all super nice kids, but there was a team uniform that set them apart, starting with the nutso $300 sunglasses.

    Are the jocks in J’s school badly behaved otherwise?

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    2. I had naively hoped that one of the benefits of having boy children is avoiding those status driven conversations about clothes. I can’t imagine my younger kiddo having this conversation, but, time will only tell. He is susceptible to peer pressure, and right now, the pressure is to wear athletic shorts, all the time. Will have to see how he and we react if the pressure is to wear Oakley sunglasses and Vinyard Vines (which I hadn’t heard of until Laura brought them up).

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      1. I thought that, too.

        My 9-year-old’s particularly clothing quirk is that he is naturally formal, so his idea of comfy weekend clothes is wearing a small version of what his daddy wears to work. We’ve had a number of Sundays where they were wearing exactly the same thing. Meanwhile, I have to be vigilant on Sunday morning to make sure that big sister doesn’t leave the house wearing hot pink fleece pants.

        A couple years ago, when we’d have free dress days at school (uniform is normal dress), he would wear his uniform for those days.

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      2. My son used to like to dress up, too, before the peer pressure. I’d gotten a cheap suit for him when he was about 3, and he wore it when we traveling, because, “Daddy always wears a suit when he goes on a business trip.” He also wore a fake plastic sword. He provided a lot of entertainment to everyone on that trip.

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  9. she hangs out with lots of guys who wear shorts like these.

    I’m pretty sure that the name for the guys who wear those shorts isn’t “jocks” but rather “douches”. Especially when worn with top-siders or expensive flip-flops.

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    1. I refuse to judge people based on their clothes. Mind you, I understand that this particular style might indeed be a uniform signalling once membership in a group whose value system I might not appreciate. But I’ll try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

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      1. But I’ll try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

        Of course- some of those douches might be nice enough guys, in some ways. I mean, I’d be surprised, but you can always hold out hope.

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    2. I just looked up “top-siders” and they mostly just look like ugly casual shoes.

      Why the hate?

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      1. They are ugly, but mostly, when worn w/ those shorts and no socks, they are a big part of the douche uniform- like wearing Vans or Airwalks if you were a 1980’s skateboarder.

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  10. I was already in a bad mood. Now I find out from checking other online stores that fashion houses have decreed men’s shorts Must Be Shorter. Many of the shorts are Too Short. Argh. The Vineyard Vines shorts at least have a 9′ inseam.

    Here’s a 5′ JCrew pair. $54. Dusty Rose.

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      2. There are consignment stores.

        One of my difficulties is that darling daughter is 1) not a shopper and 2) highly opinionated about what she doesn’t like, so internet or catalog options are most feasible. It’s nice to be able to just grab her for five minutes, ask “Do you like this and this and this?”, let her go and do the order.

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    2. Oooh! I just had a wave of inspiration.

      Combine these dusty rose men’s short shorts with a v-necked shirt. Not sure about the shoes–topsiders? This is surprisingly difficult to figure out.

      (If Matt’s still around, I feel the same way about v-necked t-shirts on men that you feel about topsiders.)

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  11. My 11YO DD is 5’5″ and wears adult sizes. She’s had very good luck with the Eddie Bauer catalog, it’s a lot like Lands End only slightly sportier. Give it a shot.

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  13. The PNW “uniform” out here is red plaid shirt, beard, grey cardigan, dark wash jeans with a cuff, brown leather or suede shoes.

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