getting kids dressed...
for the first day of school, or anytime.
It’s 7:15 am. I hear one of my children rustling in their bedroom, but I know better than to stir. This child wants to be the first one dressed. They want to try to slip noiselessly out of bed, pry open the wardrobe they share with their siblings, and as quietly as possible pull t-shirt, undies, and pants over their still-warm-from-the-covers body without rousing a soul. Once dressed they patter past our bed and stand on the side of the pink bathtub in order to comb their hair and arch their eyebrows in the mirror as they admire their handiwork. Later, they will not need to be reminded to put on socks but the pants they chose will be hovering somewhere just south of their knees and their shirt will have the tell-tale traces of ice cream splatter.
It’s 7:30 am. There’s a child dripping wet from a shower they insisted they take before school despite the typical moratorium on the practice. They are currently furious because they cannot find a clean pair of underwear and they shall not, under any circumstances, be wearing their sibling’s underwear. How very dare I suggest it??? They have rifled through the dirty laundry for their favorite shorts, but those, along with all the rest, seem to be at laundromat, thanks to their indolent, good-for-nothing parents. They’d really like to know who’s running this household, anyway. Clean underwear will eventually be found in the place where it belongs and we will all move merrily toward the next crisis.
It’s 8:00 am, the time we are supposed to leave the apartment. There’s a child sitting in their underwear asking for a third serving of nocciolata toast with not even a glimmer of concern for the time or becoming clothed.
Getting children dressed can feel Herculean at best and Sisyphean at worst. Any one of my children might be the main character in any one of the above scenarios on any given day. Somehow we persevere.
Sartorial proclivities and specific family dynamics, aside, most of us are smack in the season where parents of young children are thinking about how to get kids out of the bathing suits they’ve been in all summer and dressed for a new school year. Pants not worn since April are creeping above ankles, knees have rips in them, grass stains have infiltrated every last fiber of short bottoms, and socks have been swallowed by summer camp and washing machines. How to go about replacing these items as simply, sustainably, and ethically as possible? How to muster the energy for any of it and maintain some sanity?
The truth, as always, is that there are a million different ways to go about this. There are folks with ample means and folks without, there are school uniforms and hand-me-downs, consignment shops and thrift stores, jumble sales and two-for-one sales, precious boutiques and home-sewn marvels and every possible combination in between. There’s no perfect formula here, or a magical one-stop shop to solve all of our problems, but there are a few things I’ve learned, a few things I’ve come to accept, and a few things I’d like a word with the powers-that-be about.
As ever, we can acknowledge the limits of wielding our personal spending power for planetary good and acknowledge the need for systemic change within the clothing industry at the same time that we can make an effort to nudge the beast of back-to-school shopping toward less rampant overconsumption, less waste, and less exploitation of people and planet. Here’s how I try: