Mum Diary: Why are everyone else's kids so FASHIONABLE?

Is it just me, or are children becoming more fashionable? Stepping into Harry’s preschool for a word with the teachers this week, I wondered if there was some special event that I had forgotten.

The little girls were in stylish summer dresses with matching bows and socks, or artistically asymmetric tops with quirky slogans paired with skinny jeans. One was in heels. The boys wore chinos with branded trainers and checked shirts; the very definition of ‘smart casual’.
 
“No, they’ve just got their smart new summer clothes on,” smiled the member of staff I was talking to. I glanced at Harry wearing well-scuffed jeans, his only pair of shoes (they cost about £30! I am not buying more than one pair at a time) and a Superman t-shirt complete with cape. I couldn’t help but think that if all these children went to a bar, Harry would be the only one turned away for looking scruffy.

Okay, admittedly any bar admitting 20-odd pre-schoolers has more to worry about than its dress code. But my point stands - I have definitely noticed that as my toddler gets older his peers are becoming more fashionable.

When Harry was a baby, he wore a mis-matched selection of knitted ‘things’, sleeper suits and soft comfy trousers. I favoured clothing with dinosaurs and tractors on, or occasionally farmyard animals and trains. The other babies I knew wore much the same.

[Mum Diary: Of Course My Baby Isn't Good]
[Mum Diary: How many babies should one mum have?]

As Harry has got older, I’ve continued dressing him in similar clothes; I choose motifs I think he’ll like, such as dinosaurs, animals, tractors and trucks. He has asked for a few tops – mostly superhero t-shirts – but more often than not he just wants to wear his pirate or spider costume.

However, many of the children we meet dress like something from a catalogue. So should I be dressing Harry more fashionably?

It never used to be like this; at least, not for me. I can still remember being very fond of a jumper with a duck embroidered on it. I used to wear it with a neat collar and my favourite pair of tie-dye leggings. My mother cared that I was warm, comfy and clean – her sartorial ambitions didn’t stretch beyond that.

And don’t get me started on haircuts, it’s a sore subject. When I was a child, my grandma used to put a bowl on my head and cut around it, giving me a pudding-bowl mop that earned me the school nickname ‘Haystack’.

Before I went to boarding school aged 11, she literally shaved my head ‘in case of lice’. She told me that all the other girls would have similar haircuts. They didn’t, of course - I think she may have confused boarding school with prison.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit that my mother disputes my shaved-head story. When I told her I was including it in this blog, she claimed: “Nonsense! It wasn’t shaved at all; it was just a lovely close crop. And it wasn’t about lice; it was to make it easier to manage. We called it a ‘poodle crop’”.)

Just for the record, if you have your daughter’s hair clipped as closely as a poodle’s then her friends are going to call it shaved and rub it for luck.

[Mum Diary: Why table manners don't matter]
[Mum Diary: Am I over-stimulating my toddler?]
 
I am determined never to do that to my boys and I always take them to the local barber. But all I ask for is a short back and sides, nothing actually fashionable. Yet I often see little pre-schooler boys with gel spikes in their hair, or carefully styled long locks.

In the supermarket last week, I genuinely saw a five-year-old girl with a Rachel-from-Friends hairdo. I know, what are her parents thinking? That’s so 1990s…

But more seriously, I have started to worry that I am doing my boys a disservice. My priorities at this age have been for them to be dressed warmly, comfortably and in clothes that don’t restrict their movements at all. After that, I have generally been swayed by the ‘cute’ factor, which means they mostly wear jumpers with fluffy monsters on and hats with ears.

I think that is an absolutely normal way to dress a baby and toddler; but I don’t want Harry to feel out of place at preschool. I worry that his experiences right now could shape his attitude towards school later, which could affect everything from his grades to his confidence.

So what will I do? Well, I can’t quite bring myself to dress my two tiny boys in high-end fashion and I am definitely not planning on spiking their hair with gel anytime soon; I love their baby smell too much. They have some very smart outfits for weddings and the rest of their clothes are cute, clean and ironed – I don’t think they need anything more than that at ages three and one.

Perhaps the best compromise is to wait until they ask me if they can be more fashionable, or until they start taking more of an interest in their clothes. While I am never going to be willing or able to kit them out in Calvin Klein jeans and designer haircuts, I don’t want them to be the kids that get laughed at for being hopelessly unstylish.

After all, somewhere inside me there’s an 11-year-old girl with a shaved head and a duck jumper insisting that I let them dress well.

What do you think? Are children over-styled these days? Or is it unfair to let kids get singled out for being unfashionable? Have your say using the comments below.