Shopping With The Boy

New Diesel shoes for The Boy

Today I spent the afternoon with The Boy shopping and having a late lunch (Mexican food, his favorite).  This is the very first time ever that The Boy actually went shopping with me of his own free will.  He actually WANTED to go with me to pick out clothes.  He has never, ever done this in his entire life.  Usually, I have to drag him kicking and screaming and when we get there he doesn't know what he likes, wants or even cares.  Most of the time he would clam up and refuse to speak or even look at me or acknowledge the salespeople in the stores who were trying to be helpful.  When he was really small he would run and hide in the clothing racks so I couldn't find him.  Stores were just not a fun place for The Boy.  Too bright, too noisy, too stressful, sensory overload!

I gave up taking him with me a long time ago.  I would either order things online or go to the store by myself and buy lots of different things I thought he might like, bring them home and let him try them on.  What he didn't like or didn't fit, I would return or exchange until he had things he would wear.  Buying things I liked for him didn't work unless he like them.  If he didn't like it, he refused to wear it.  Collared shirts - Out!  Blue jeans - Out!  Long sleeved shirts - Out!  Sandals or flip flops - Out!  He would wear the same pair of pants over and over again so I would just buy him a few pairs of the same exact pants.  I wasn't going to wash clothes every night and he doesn't wash so it was either that or wear dirty, smelly pants that could walk by themselves by the end of the week.  I prefer to make it as simple as possible.  If there is only one color and style of pants The Boy will wear, then that's what I would buy for him.  I prefer to save my energy for other more important battles than what he wants to wear.

When The Boy was in elementary school and high school, believe me we had more than our share of battles.  Clothing wasn't going to be one of them.  I would've sent him to school in a burlap sack if that was the only thing he would wear.  (well, maybe not that extreme).  He stopped wearing jeans cold turkey in about third grade when I sent him to school in a pair of jeans from the GAP and another kid told him GAP stands for "Girls Are Pretty".  That was enough to traumatize him from wearing any pair of jeans forever.  I tried to convince him to wear a pair of grey 7 For All Mankind jeans a couple of years ago.  He wouldn't go near them.

We found some really cute cargo pants (no jeans) and t-shirts at Express.  The Boy doesn't really care for when I say something is "cute"because he's a guy and guys don't wear "cute" things,  but oh well, I thought they were cute and they looked really good on The Boy.  He only wears short sleeves so all shirts with long sleeves were ruled out immediately and then we only had to find some t-shirts he liked.  Easy!   This is the first time I've bought anything for him at Express.  Usually we shop at Old Navy, American Eagle or Abercrombie and Fitch.  Next time I might even try Banana Republic.  We even found a pair of black Diesel shoes he liked at Saks Fifth Avenue.  The Boy is branching out!  There might be hope!