I spent this past week getting my 2 kids ready for back-to-school. What a difference shopping is for boys vs. girls! The biggest difference is boys simply don’t care. Well at least mine doesn’t yet. Maybe when he gets older he’ll want certain brands, or specific things. He’s 10 now and could care less about what he wears. His only request – “I want it to be comfy and soft”. And I totally get that. That’s pretty much all I want out of my clothes these days too!
My daughter, however, since the age of 3 has picked out each and every outfit she wears. When she was in preschool I welcomed her creative input each day. Each night before school, she would lay her outfit out on her bedroom floor. I didn’t care if it was stripes & patterns that didn’t match. Or yellow pants & a purple shirt. It was her choice, so I always let her run with that creativity.
Now that she’s a teen I’ve started questioning why I encouraged her fashion creativity. WHY am I questioning it? One reason – because it’s EXPENSIVE! GIRLS are expensive! Accessories, shoes, belts, hair items… it’s never-ending!!!
Here’s a visual of our back-to-school shopping excursion:
My SON (one store):
- Sneakers ✔️
- Backpack ✔️
- READY FOR SCHOOL ✔️
My daughter (14 stores):
- Sneakers ✔️
- Slide on shoes ✔️
- Boots ✔️
- Jeans ✔️
- Shorts ✔️
- Leggings ✔️
- Capri Leggings ✔️
- Cute tops (x5) ✔️
- Dress ✔️
- Heart-shaped belt ✔️
- Star-shaped belt ✔️
- Cute necklace with stars ✔️
- Cute necklace with hearts (to match the belt) ✔️
- Cute necklace to match the dress ✔️
- Hair scrunchy (x5 – “But mom – I need one in every color to match the cute shirts I bought”) ✔️
- Squishy monkey keychain ✔️
- Scented hand sanitizer ✔️
- STILL NOT READY FOR SCHOOL (but very happy!) ✔️✔️✔️