So we don't have dress up clothes. Like in the house. On top of that we have a bevy of sensory issues meaning that crocs are literally the only shoes that will grace 4 of 8 feet in our house. This should be fine in the year 2014 and for the most part it is. OK in the winter we add socks and happen to live in a warm climate. Otherwise crocs work. But for most legitimately fancy occasions we are the ones showing up with boys in mortifying arrays of t-shirts and athletic bottoms.
So a bat mitzvah of ours happened last year and the athletic gear (by the way they don't do sports, just look like it) came to a screeching halt. We sat each young sir down and had a long discussion about what clothes might possibly be acceptable. They weren't just resistant, they refused. Shoes without holes, shirts with sleeves, pants with zippers. These foreign items were rejected again and again. So, desperate, I went online and the items magically appeared at our front door where we had to all take deep breaths and face them.
Our boys are not toddlers, mind you - they are tweens. They understand logic and the idea of dress clothes and occasions requiring showers shouldn't be a mind bender for them. They tried the clothes on grudgingly and miserably. The looked like a million bucks from the neck down and like they needed to be admitted to the ER from neck up. Day after day these clothes hung, looming like a threat in the distance. And their coordinating compromise of a shoe, chucks, sat nearby. Eventually they wore them and tore them off as soon as possible. But if you see the pictures you can easily note the discomfort in their sweet little boy eyes.
And all of this drama really made me wonder what kind of massive disservice I had done my boys by not shoehorning them into stiff and uncomfortable clothes prior to this date. If I had put them in toddler suits with bowties they may have been both adorable and more accepting of formal fashion. Even if I had forced a khaki or a jean they could still be successful in a business casual future. Yet, zippers and buttons are a true annoyance and I still can't make myself force it - even knowing as I do that this lackadaisical slice of parenthood will likely limit their careers prospects.
The responsibilities of parenthood are plentiful and substantial - penny loafers I didn't think would rank as high as, it turns out, they and their formal comrades do. Apparently I have fated my boys to become entrepreneurial internet millionaires working from a coffee shop or scrub sporting doctors. Dangit - well, at least they are happy and comfie.