It's cooooolllllllld here in Ohio, where it
will stay—give or take twenty more degrees—for the next few months. Ohio is all things during this time of year—mild
and cloudy, wet and cloudy, or bone-cold and cloudy. Sometimes all in the same day.
And it’s the time of year that the “shorts thing” gets
talked about.
“I fight with my son every.single.morning
about shorts,” a mother told me last week, her jaw clenched. “I tell him he
needs to wear pants, a sweatshirt, hat and gloves and a winter coat… and he wants to wear shorts and a T-shirt.”
“Stop fighting with him,” I told her. “It’s not worth it.”
“But he’ll get cold and sick,” she sputtered. "It's... like.... zero degrees out there."
“He may get cold, but being cold won’t make him sick.” I mentioned how that whole getting-sick thing
works.
“I know, I know,” she said.
“But…” I felt her truth bubbling up.
“What will other parents say?
They’ll judge me for letting him go outside dressed like that.”
Ahhh, I thought.
There it is.
“Let them judge,” I scoffed.
“So I should just let him wear shorts?”
“Yes,” I said. “If he
gets cold enough, he’ll wear long pants and his coat.”
*Important
caveat: When a child doesn’t have
appropriate clothing for cold weather, that’s a different story. If he doesn’t have a choice, I’ll find a
solution. I’ll go out and buy a full
closet full of warm clothing before I’ll let a kid be cold. Seriously.
That’s not what we’re talking about here.*
This conversation
is about a child choosing not to wear
warm clothing.
Not a battle worth picking, people. Here’s why.
They can dress themselves correctly. When kids are toddlers, they need help
figuring out how to dress. But the older they get, the more equipped they are
to make their own decisions about clothing.
Older kids can make good
choices for themselves. And they can
handle the consequences of a bullheaded or poor clothing choice.
Decision-making is a
skill to practice. Kids need to be
able to make decisions about their clothing.
It’s practice for making decisions about other stuff—bigger stuff. When my children are getting ready for the
day, they’ll ask, “How cold is it outside?”
I try to answer with a predicated degree range (“It’s supposed to be in
the thirties today”) but I also recommend, “Go outside and see how it
feels. Then decide what kind of clothing
to wear.” Then I back off. If they get it completely wrong, I’ll advise
a change—otherwise, I let them go. It is
all part of letting kids take ownership and responsibility for themselves—and
becoming independent problem solvers.
Kids feel temperature
differently. No, really. They do.
If I had a dime for every time I stand next to a 10-year-old who’s happy
wearing shorts and a T-shirt, while I shiver in my 4-layer outfit and my
ankle-length “recess coat,” I’d have my lake house by now. Kids don’t get as cold. It’s baffling and inexplicable—I know! They’re little and teeny-tiny!—but super-true. Just
yesterday, I stood on the playground huddled against the wind and a fourth
grader went whizzing by me, dribbling a soccer ball and bouncing like Tigger. “Aren’t you cold?” I asked him when he came
back around. He scrunched up his
eyebrows. “I’m hot!” he said. Sweat dripped down his temple.
Who am I to question
a parent’s clothing decision?
I know a principal in another state who is fastidious about
students wearing coats if it is under forty degrees, and she requires teachers
to pull students from recess if they don’t follow that rule. Um…. No.
Besides the whole singling-out-a-student thing, I never want to trump protocol (or
“house rules”) of another parent. If
parents are busy trying to teach their child self-sufficiency and
decision-making, I’m not going to get in the way of it. And on the other side of the coin, if a
parent micromanages a child’s clothing choices and sends them off with a
particular clothing plan, again, it’s not my place to second-guess.
Who am I to question
a student’s clothing decision? I
don’t want to get in a battle of wills with a student over something as
inconsequential as warm clothing.
Because, you know… there are…
Natural consequences. You know what happens when I don’t wear a
coat on a particularly cold day? I’m
cold. And you know whose fault it is? Mine.
Same with kids. If
they choose not to dress warmly—? Well,
then. They’ll be cold.
They’ll either begin to prioritize… or not.
And… gotta pick the
right battles. I’m thinking about
student behaviors, their reading and writing strengths, their family dynamics,
how to get sixteen buses in and out of a loop in less than five minutes. Those things.
I can’t micromanage things at the coat-and-zipper level. So. I
don’t.
Not long ago, my family traipsed into the grocery store on a
particularly brisk winter day. My
husband and I were dressed with our coats, hats, and gloves. My son wore shorts. We passed a friend in the produce aisle; he greeted us, then commented on the cold weather, then looked
at my son. “Where’s your coat, young
man?” My son shrugged, and our friend
looked up at us. My husband didn’t miss
a beat. “I’m not cold,” he shrugged. “And
he’ll wear his coat when he feels he should.”
Done. End of conversation.
We’d
asked our son to put on his coat, and he chose not to. We didn’t fight it. He went out into the world half-dressed… and
we let him deal with it.
