When my youngest was three, everyday she wore a two piece dropped shoulder polyester peach coloured size 6 woman’s outfit. The skirt was cut on the bias for excellent twirling. It was given to us along with many other wacky things by a favourite neighbour to put in our tickle trunk(dress up clothes. It had been this woman’s outfit back in 1988. My daughter spotted it and chose it as her favourite. If you knew her at three you would know that it would be foolish for me to choose this as a battle. Although if you had seen the outfit on her you would know how difficult it was for me to let her wear it.
I turned to look at my daughter one day and she was wearing this outfit (the skirt drooped to her ankles), her ski jacket, a weird looking hat and her clunky winter boots and mismatched mittens.
She looked like an orphan. Or a bag lady.
My favourite art student back then was a little guy who arrived to class all winter in his “scuba suit”. His zip front long sleeved bathing suit was the thing her wore everyday all year long for a year and a half. I instantly liked his mom for letting him and putting up with the stares.
Someone really close to me wore a homemade spiderman costume for all of grade two. Finally, the family did an intervention and threw it away before it disintegrated into thin air.
My best friend’s daughters wore tinkerbell and little mermaid costumes one entire hot summer at the cottage. Even when they slept. Even when they swam.
Right now uniforms are being considered for preschoolers (see Globe and Mail Do preschoolers really need uniforms?). I don’t know about this- while I think it is AMAZING, maybe even life-saving and most certainly time saving for teenage girls to wear uniforms– not sure I agree with it for Preschoolers.
What do you think?
Geez, if my kid couldn’t wear her crazy mixed up patterns and mismatched socks… and really, I like that she is allowed to be that kooky kid. I know in some schools, it makes sense to at least have the kids all wear, for example, navy pants and a navy or white top, as some are doing now, but I don’t think preschoolers need to have that, and I don’t think their parents need the fight, either. I know mine both have had strong preferences about favourite clothes, and I think preschoolers are too young to understand the rationale behind uniforms, the way older kids can.
Uniforms don’t have to be the full deal to be useful.
I lived in Italy in the 80’s, I remember my yonger siblings each wearing a “coverup” uniform. It was a black smock for boys and a white smock for girls.
They could be bought at various price points, had similar shapes and covered them to the wrists and to the knees. They wore them all gradeschool.
Nobody even noticed what kids wore underneath and if they did have a penchant for the cashmere sweater they owned, they could wear it and not spoil it with school play or lunch.
It also allowed for “self-dressers” to be as nutty as would be seasonal and I would have begged for that chance for much of my early struggles with both my girls.
And most mercifully it allowed children of modest means not to have to worry if they had worn elbows or stains on their clothing.
We also had other advantages like state sponsored lunch programs so every child ate together at school and it mattered not how little of the supplement you could pay. Pretty civilized all in all.
I was in middle school and I actually envied them the smocks, I would have welcomed being free of the burden of choosing clothing during my most awkward period.
Just my two cents.
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Boo – serioulsy boo. It’s almost too ridiculous to comment on this – I SO agree with you Nanc for teenage girls – but not for preschoolers….I love Will’s t-shirts too much!!! Today he was in his union jack shirt!!!
True dat, Village. 😉
because you are running an extremely stylish organization, grumbler
I think pre-schoolers get too dirty to wear anything other than jeans each day. I don’t know if I could get behind a uniform at that age, but yes, it would probably be a time-saver/argument-queller each day…
So far we haven’t had issues about wearing costumes or whatever to school, or all day – I know I’d hate giving in… chances are, I wouldn’t. (Or at least not often. I’m mean like that, yo.)