MotherSoup

With that white trim he must have been a prefect…

Uniform acquisition feels like a game which all parents obliged to play. There is no escape; our only choices come in the tactics we use. I’ve been caught out before by leaving it too late and finding the shelves and racks scoured clean of all the decent stuff. The limited availability of school uniform stock feels like such a whim of the big shops - slotted in between between Easter Eggs and Christmas Cards in the timetable for their seasonal aisles. Kids, of course, don’t grow at other times of the year…

So I bow to consumer pressure, and grab what I can asap. And if it’s 3 for 2, and I only need to buy 2, I use the third slot for something to stash away for future years - clever huh? Not when the school starts to apply… the Pressure.

You see, you *can* buy certain items from the shops, but if you buy the school’s own branded equivalent, you know you are Helping to Fund Your Child’s Education. It’s laudable, yes, it’s a positive and valid way for the school to raise money, but it costs that little bit more, and that little bit more multiplied by x number of items and then by y number of children and then by z number of years that they attend the school becomes quite a lot indeed.

This year there have been little changes in some uniform items for one of our schools, and the school has been keen to encourage orders of new items, perhaps to make them cost effective, perhaps to bring in the income, quite possibly both. There’s been some talk amongst parents about the dilemmas this causes. If you don’t buy (whether because of cost or because your child still fits the previous size) then you may as well hang a sign round your kid’s neck saying “NOT SUPPORTING THE SCHOOL” - how comfortable do we feel about that? Another Mum was lamenting that she had been given a fine quality winter coat for her child, but felt obliged to buy her school’s own coat as well because she didn’t want her child to look different.

I thoroughly accept that schools need to make money, and I very much want to help, but I have to work to a tight budget and can’t just jump at new purchases at short notice. The Soup Family Children will be wearing the same clothes and carrying the same bags until those are worn out or too small, and then they’ll be obliged to wear a size or two bigger until they grow into them.

And there’s a point - bags! School bags, lunch bags, gym bags… “I got him a new bag for starting P3″ said a parent of a littlie to me last week. Errr - why? If the old bag has still got some life in it, it gets used in our house. It seems to be an outmoded concept, Using Something Until It’s Worn Out or Broken, but it’s one I hold to. Bags at least you can buy all year round.

And finally on the subject of uniform, I have been infuriated by these back-to-back adverts running in the print media for M&S:

Boys’ trousers that repel water! Girls, you see, don’t get wet - maybe the raindrops just turn to rose petals an inch above their heads! And boys’ trousers that repel stains! Because girls don’t get mucky - oh, no. Boys are self-absorbed in their own athletic, energetic activities (see photo) while girls are self-conscious, passive wallflowers (again see photo). There are well-recognised issues about girls’ self-confidence and body image as they grow up. It would be lovely to think that they too, like their brothers, could enjoy physical activity without feeling self-conscious and concerned about their appearance. Adverts like this do nothing to help.

And that’s not mention the infuriation faced by parents like me when we put boys’ and girls’ clothes alongside each other for comparison and only on the boys’ stuff we see: tough textured soles, plenty of pockets, more durable fabrics.  Actually, M&S do produce girls’ trousers with the same protective coating - but not the ones with the sparkly charm - of course girls can’t be pretty and practical at the same time.

Quite a rant going on here, isn’t there? And uniform is supposed to make our lives easier…