He’s always wore sketchers. Like since he was 4. Recently, he got really emotionally taking about shoes he wanted for middle school. He said if he doesn’t get Nikes he’s going to get teased. Great fucking marketing work Nike.
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Did you try to teach him to be proud of his independence and differences? Maybe you can work with him on nice come backs against the teasing.
As far as I remember (25 years ago), this doesn’t work. Kids just don’t appreciate witty comebacks
If anything they lean in and double down.
It works if they’re not comebacks, but actually hurtful insults.
They go hard, you go harder.
I avoided bullying in school by being fucking oblivious. It was effective.
Maybe that could be taught
You know what works?
Punching your bully in the face
Comebacks dont matter when you can just point at the shoes and call him broke (im not a teen anymore but come on guys lol, thats when you fit in to avoid issues or have issues, no magical way out)
There is a way out, but it involves not caring what classmates think. That’s a high bar for a lot of kids, especially in middle school. Kids have to come to that conclusion on their own. No amount of adults telling them “you shouldn’t care” will change things.
By high school I found social success after not caring what others thought. But I had been bullied my whole school experience up til that point, so by high school I had run out of fucks to give. In other words, I learned the hard way, but that’s something every teen has to figure out for themselves.
Is it even possible to not care at this age though? At this point school and interacting with your peers is a vast majority of your life. I don’t think I have ever seen a kid being bullied every day at school and not caring. How can you not care if you’re scared?
I guess it is possible as you get older, more mature and closer to adulthood. But for a kid in a primary or middle school? Kinda hard to imagine for me.
Yes, if they have already figured out how to handle bullies in grade school/middle school. Early grade school there was a bully who picked on me and my older brother helped out. By grade five I was the one helping other kids who were being bullied.
A lot of credit goes to youth groups like 4-H for helping to build self confidence and how to care for others. May have been lucky getting a solid local group though.
Oh, it’s absolutely possible, but only after experiencing such abuse and isolation that you come to prefer your own company.
The last straw for me came when I finally stood up to my so-called “best friend,” who acted perfectly sweet when we were alone, but who threw me under the bus whenever my bullies were around. Our families were (and sadly, still are) friends, so I’d known her since she was born and there was a lot of social pressure for us to hang out together. She abused me constantly and loved to fuck with my head. I figured that if that was the “best” friend I could have, then I didn’t need friends at all. One day on the bus home, shortly after she’d spread yet another rumor about me, I called her a traitor and a backstabber.
She immediately turned to the bullies sitting behind us (whose hobbies included talking about me, stealing my stuff, and putting gum in my hair) and said, “That’s so funny! She just called me a traitor!” Yep, I was done.
That was in my last year of middle school. Going into high school, I was resolved to not give a fuck what anybody said about me. I decided to stop trying to change myself to fit in. I embraced my own interests without a care what anybody would say.
And that first year of high school was when I ended up making actual, real friends for the first time. People who actually get me. The payoff was huge and still benefits me today, but it came at a great cost during my most impressionable age.
I don’t know about now, but back in the 90s the magical out was that you punched them in the face.
Back then the concept of a school shooting didn’t exist, and parents didn’t threaten to sue the school every 5 minutes.
So teachers would just let the fights go.
“Oh, Billy tried bullying Bobby, and now Bobby punched Billy in the face? Eh…call me when they break bones and spill blood. I’m going to go make popcorn.”
These days? I’m sure both kids would get expelled.
Yep. I was poor and weird but I was also 6 foot tall and pretty big. Its amazing what one really good punch to the face of someone does to your rep for the rest of high school.
The kids that dont ocassionally crash out to defend themselves are the ones ppl watch as schoolshooters like the ones that never defended themselves growing up and just simmer, the quiet ones
Oh man it’s like every out of touch bad advice I was given as a kid came back.
Being proud of your independence and difference is bad advice? What’s your world like then, submitting and following others?
Yeah let’s be proud of his independence by promoting him to make choices such as what shoes he wears.
The kid wants something so he can practice the art of being social and fitting in. You are not enriching their lives by giving them the answer without letting them work it out and come to their own understanding.
he could be but hes gonna get roasted for sketchers til college probably
But it’s not “his independence” if it wasn’t his choice to buy those shoes. You cannot be proud of your own choices when they weren’t your own choices.
I tried, His Mom agreed and already bought him shoes.
One of mine is in high school, and as much as I hate the confirming culture, especially because it’s led by morons and marketing, I choose the same path. I allowed my (now high school kid) to participate in all the awful crap that I would never do myself when she felt middle school pressure. She was in the popular kids group.
The caveat has been it all comes with extreme education from my end. Not demeaning or condescending. I over-preach about marketing/ads/influencers and constantly question why people make the choices they do. I question everything though. “How do you know that?” often leads back to tick tock.
In my experience, the OTHER kids are now getting smarter as they age. Mine is now able to live her life how she wants and is still with that same group , and the kids (I shit you not) look to her for purchasing advice. The vanity kinda goes away as their brains leave that dumb social hierarchy age.
Note: My kids are/were decked out in Nike. We live by the world headquarters and a good chunk of the kids’ parents work there. If that isn’t peer pressure, I dunno what is!
It’s not a Nike thing. It’s a kid thing. Kids are dicks, sorry
Is that why Apple has got the US by the balls because people want to avoid the dreaded green bubble in iMessage? I’m not from the US so that might be me misunderstanding the situation, but I’ve been told that even many adults in the US view that as a valid reason to avoid anything that’s not an iphone, because of some social stigma attached to the green bubble.
As far as I hear every time: Yep
- A european
Green bubble shaming is real and I felt it in middle school but more so in highschool from my own softball team. Hated that shit, but I loved my Moto g7 play so those bitches can fuck themselves.
You can call it social stigma but it’s really just that there’s more you can do when texting someone else with an apple phone. A lot of the time the same messaging has a totally different vibe than when both people are on iPhones. Things can be lost in context etc.
Some of that has disappeared with RCS support, fortunately.
But yes, Apple successfully positioned their texting app as a rich formatted chat app when used between iPhone users, behaving more like WhatsApp or KakaoTalk or other chat apps than like traditional texting. But when messaging people without iPhones, it was just standard texting (worse, since they would degrade the quality of MMS images more than necessary, as I understand). To the uninformed, this seemed like everyone else were the ones lagging behind. “How could your phone be any good? Images you send are terrible. I can’t name chats that have you in it. If I react to your messages it spams the group chat.” Etc.
Brilliant, but absolutely evil, move by Apple. Unfortunately it worked. The only reason I use an iPhone today is that years ago I got tired of being left out of conversations and media sharing by my family and my wife’s family, who all use iPhones. So when my OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition died an early, watery death (rest in peace, king among phones) and nothing else really wowed me in the Android space at the time, I bit the bullet and went to the dark side. I enjoy the iPhone, but I’m still bitter about why I got it.
When I was a kid, there was a phase where everyone was obsessed with red flannel. Went on for like 3 months.
Imagine a pro dominantly black/Latino school in the hood where we’re all dressing up like Al Borland from Home Improvement.
I mean, I can see it
When I was young (in the late 80’s) it was Air Jordans.
But, on top of being teased for not having them, you would also get jumped by kids who wanted to steal them from you.
Happened to me. Got Nikes, got teased because they were not a good enough model. Kids are monsters.
Yup. Learned that one back in the 3rd grade. This stuff is hard if you’re not experienced enough to know how people work.
On the upside, I learned that one cannot buy their way into other’s good graces, especially if they’re going to require you to modify your behavior to get there; they’re lying and that was never the issue. On the downside: holy shit that hurts once it goes wrong the first time.
As an adult I can also appreciate that there are situations where you can “buy your way in” to a club or status of some sort. IMO, those situations are generally not worth it to begin with, requiring an never-ending stream of cash to keep up appearances. Plus, it surrounds you with other people that also believe, and are invested, in the program. It’s a recipe for elitism at best, and a big 'ol grift at worst. Better friends and relationships can be had for $0 everywhere else.
Yeah, he’s not getting made fun of for his shoes. They’re just a convenient target of ridicule. Son is about to learn a life lesson.
I’m sorry. People are shit.
I always had Chucks, not because I didn’t wanna get teased mind you I just thought they were cool. Kids teased me for different things anyway.
But man, they never really lasted that long. One to one and a half years of daily use, and they doubled in price in the last ~15 years (which maybe isn’t that much but I feel the quality went down a bit).
I remember being 4 or 5 back in the 70s, my mom tried to put me in Converse, I refused to wear them calling them “clown shoes”. LOL.
I feel vindicated.
Yeah, ever since Nike bought the lot they’ve been a bit mad with the designs…
I’ve always liked the style of chucks, but yeah. They fall apart faster than wet tissue paper.
I remember when high tops were in vogue. Granted, I hung out with kids in the “alternative music” scene, and Vans sponsored Warped Tour so much that “Vans Warped Tour” was just a normal term for us.
I love Skechers.
I don’t know if this is a bad idea, but recently all the Chinese manufacturers spoke out about how much the products they make actually cost, you can find the exact warehouse that makes them, and order directly from them, at a ridiculous mark down. Like a 10th of the price, or less. Might be worth some research. I see Adidas sambas for $10, including postage. They’re all there. They just don’t have the actual name label on them yet, because that’s all they do when they reach the distributor, though, so might be useless to you.
How do you find these?
Probably aliexpress or something
At my school back when I was still in education it was all adidas :3
I’ll tease my kids if they don’t wear Asics
You should go out of your way to ensure you always have replacement sneakers for them, and not a single pair should be Asics.
Why not?
I got teased for my shoes. I got better shoes, I got teased for my jacket, I got a better jacket. So then they just made shit up to tease me about.
I saw the fucker that bullied me relentlessly for all three years in middle school about 10 years later. He was pounding stakes in the ground setting up for a carnival. He stopped me in apologized which was kind of surprising. I gave him an absolutely hollow but convincing thanks and what about my day.
I did a little light internet stalking, turns out he’s vocal that can’t keep a job, construction companies fire him for “no reason” and he’s now down to whatever local company will hire him for physical labor. The only truly sad part is he has multiple children with multiple women and will not own up to any of them.
Though, I really suppose I owe a lot of who I am to the hell he put me through. Insults mean fuck all to me and I can ignore stress in a bad situation and make solid decisions.
My grade school bully is serving life in prison for attempted double homicide. IIRC he’s also a sex offender.
Obviously the decisions he made as an adult are his responsibility, but honestly I feel bad for him. He didn’t have much of a chance. His home life was terrible, and he took it out on those around him. He had no positive role models in his daily life besides those at his school, who were always punishing him because he couldn’t conform to a world utterly foreign to his own where people weren’t constantly shitty to one another, and the school didn’t have any better idea how to handle him. The kid had no support. His father was in and out of jail/prison, his mother was overwhelmed. He fell through the cracks.
It’s no surprise he turned out a piece of shit.
That doesn’t excuse his actions. Plenty of people come from difficult origins and are good people leading decent lives.
But I do pity him.
Good for you. Whenever I get this kind of situation with ny kid I think “Will this matter in five years? Will this purchase break the bank?” If not, I buy/allow/rent whatever and move on. It usually does the trick and I don’t mind if in my mind it sounds ridiculous or exaggerated, It is not about me but whatever they are going through and as long as they get the tools they need, so be it. Kid is very down to earth and doesn’t usually overconsume. The only place where we overspend is the bookstore.
Kid could toughen up a bit. Having your shoes made fun of is such a small insignificant thing. It’s probably one of the best options out there, given it’s not actually even about you. I can guarantee if the kid did not react to the teasing, they would find someone else to pick on. Who seriously cares about shoes?
Man sketchers are awesome. I have a pair that I’ve re-bought consistently for years because they were the perfect fit, comfy, and were nondescript. Now they’ve discontinued them so I have to see if I can order them online.
I remember when I was kid though. We always had hands-down, goodwill, and k-mart clothes. But one of my Pop’s jobs was a janitor at the “rich” school district and he’d watch the lost and found box and wait for the shit he brought in to expire.
Once it was in the bin for more than a month it got “donated”. Half of that stuff went to the kids of the people that worked there. My brothers and I being some of them. So Pops scored me a pair of Air Nike when Jordan was at the height of his career.
Wouldn’t you know it? One dude on the play ground had to ask why I was wearing a Walmart T-shirt while wearing Nike shoes. Seriously, kids are fucking brutal.
I learned long before that that I was “poor” so I learned how to play it off and flipped the script. “Are you that superficial that you give a shit? It never even occurred to me to look at what you’re wearing but now that I am, all you are is a wigger” (slur for a wannabe in my era/location). He left me alone the rest of our school career.
I’m in my forties now but somewhere in my thirties he hit me up on Facebook and apologized for being a little shit. Turns out he had a bit of a crush on me and that’s how he showed it amongst other reasons. He was newly divorced when he reconnected with me so I had to turn him down (that the only reason you’re apologizing, dude?) but he was much nicer about everything this time.
Kids can be nasty but many of them grow up. Anytime you can stand up to adults in front of your kids it’s teaching them how to stand up to their own peers. Show them every example you can of how to handle what they’re dealing with. How you stand up to your family, friends, and peers, is how your kids learn how to do the same thing.
You can’t buy yourself out of bullying. Even rich kids get bullied. Confidence in yourself and empathy for others are a far better lesson to teach the next generation.
It’s the Apple way.
Instead of getting him 300$ shoes give him the choice of the cool shoes or the latest coolest video game or the shoes, or whatever hobby he enjoys…
Kids tease other kids because they themselves feel insecure… that’s literally all it is… if you need Nike shoes to feel secure you’re probably not a cool person anyways
$300 shoes? I think the most expensive shoes I’ve ever bought were $70. I’m sure a lot of the issue with him getting picked on isn’t so much brand name but him feeling like he has no say in what he wears and feeling like he is dressed by his parents in styles he has no say in. Its been 25 years since I entered middle school like this kid, but back then I would have felt the same way if my parents were forcing me to wear something I didn’t like/want. It wasn’t about price either. Often times the shoes my parents wanted me to wear were the same or higher in price, but styles change over time and vary by region/groups. People have their own personalities and prefer to fit in if they can. If the kid doesn’t want to feel like a toddler and have more freedom in what they wear it isn’t a bad thing.
Kids tease whomever they perceive as weak.
If he get the shoes, it’s the wrong model. If he get the right model, it’s his hair color. Etc.
The kids who tease have severe insecurities, they are dodging and deflecting and pointing at other kids so that no one looks at them
They do not tease folks perceived as strong
Probably true. That would explain why those bullied are so eager to join the bullies when the bullies set their sights on somebody else.
Or, as the saying goes, Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
True 🦬
The shoes are probably not $300…more like $100. And the kids goal is to not feel socially ostracized, not to spend money frivolously.
It’s not worth it but give your kids whatever sheltered life you want
Having to spend money tp avoid being socially ostracized IS frivolously spending money.
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Unworthy of serious attention; trivial.
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Inappropriately silly.
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Of little weight or importance; not worth notice; slight.
Tell me you have never been bullied without actually saying it.
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