Houston, we have a problem.
It used to be that the kids could wear anything in public.
Halloween costumes in May.
Pajamas at the grocery store.
T-shirts inadvertently inside out, pants with the zipper inconveniently at the back.
No big deal.
But things have changed.
Kid #1 has gotten wise to the world.
He knows that Bench is not just something you sit on.
That Aeropostale is not just any fancy word.
That West 49 is not the name of an old cowboy show.
No sir, the boy knows cool clothes when he see ’em.
Clothes that are cool ’cause the label says so.
And his fashion sense is growing with each passing day.
In fact, Kid #1’s self-awareness is really starting to kick in.
There was a painful look on his face, the kind you see on the faces of people having a root canal, when he had to walk around the mall in winter boots.
Not cool.
It didn’t matter that his skateboard shoes were soaking wet.
He would have gladly suffered pneumonia for the sake of cool if he had his way.
Once you step outside the innocence of childhood fashion sense, public presentation takes on a whole new meaning.
It means buying cool little tins of gel to get the front bangs of your hair, combed perfectly to the right, just so.
It means grudgingly wearing a toque when the temperature dips to -20c.
Warm hats mess up your hair.
It means experimenting with various deodorant sticks to find the coolest scent.
It means finally taking personal grooming seriously, as the long-standing resistance to bath time disappears.
“Who are you and what have you done to our little boy?”
Now all parents know that their children don’t stay small forever.
Before you know it they are potty trained, graduated from kindergarten, off to overnight summer camps, asking about getting their own Gmail account, and interested in the opposite sex.
The pace at which this all happens is actually quite frightening.
Every once and a while you want to press pause, somehow slow down the entire growing-up process.
There is something both wonderful and horrifying to see your children’s worlds begin to expand at such a rapid pace.
And as they begin to care more about the opinions of others — their friends and attractive members of the opposite sex at school — you can only hope they are happy and content to be themselves despite the “demands” of fashion and culture.
They may be superficial, but those demands are a reality in the world around us, which makes parents and their coming-of-age offspring unwittingly caught in the crossfire.