CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN

As your children grow into young adults there are numerous adjustments you must make as a parent. Difficult choices. Harsh self-realizations. Profound failures. 

One oft-overlooked developmental stage is when your kids start swiping your clothes to wear. 

Below, I outline the 5 stages you will go through:

DENIAL

Hmm. Where are  those new shorts I bought? They were here in my drawer. Still with the tags on. No. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t dare take something I haven't even worn yet. (*dissolve into bitter laughter at self-deception)

I manfully stride into his room where he is lounging on bed wearing the shorts. I stare at him balefully. He looks up, innocent, wounded, misunderstood:

What? I didn’t have any shorts I could wear.

I look at the heaps of dirty and clean laundry mounded on his floor, crawling out of his stuffed, half-closed drawers.

ANGER

Remove them. Now. Carefully.

I go on a bit of a rant about not going into my stuff and taking it without asking first. This is ultimately more of an exercise in talking to myself as he rolls his eyes exaggeratedly, slowly gets up, carefully starts to remove the shorts. He stops, gestures for me to give him privacy. I leave and when I return I find the shorts in my room. On the floor.

This reminds me of my usual piece of advice to expectant fathers. They climb remote mountains to find me on my precipice, “Tell me oh wise (or, at least, wizened) one. What can I expect when I become a new father?” I tell them: Two Things. 1) Nothing you own is yours anymore. 2) Everything you own will be broken. I recommend they put their favourite things into storage for twenty years.

BARGAINING

This is not the first or last time this casual theft has happened. I regularly go prospecting in my son’s room to find items of mine. I know the insistence on not ‘borrowing’ my stuff will fall on deaf ears so I move to the next stage: bargaining.

I bring home a new shirt. My son’s eyes slide over from his device to gaze at it.

Nice shirt.

Thanks.

A really nice shirt.

Thanks. Wait. No. No! I get to wear it three times before you even can think of wearing it.

OK. Sure.

DEPRESSION

The next stage is perhaps the most difficult. When you see your teen in your clothes and you realize, heart-broken, that they look way better than you in them. Sigh. What? You thought I was going to say something touching about how they’re so big now etc.? No. Just extreme bitterness that even the best, coolest, most up to date clothes can’t make you look 18. Or 25. Or even… never-mind.

ACCEPTANCE

Ultimately, you move to the next stage. Acceptance. No matter how much they trash you for your jokes, being out of touch, lameness etc., if they are borrowing your clothes they are trying ‘you’ on and modelling themselves on you, which is pretty great. 

So next time you find your Tribe Called Quest vinyl or old football jacket or au courant shirt in their room, realize that on some level this is the ultimate compliment. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

But if you really like it – lock it up.