Another spinoff of keeping up with trends :)

amother

Linen

Tue, Jun 16 2020, 1:59 pm

I grew up in a neighborhood where almost everyone shopped in certain stores and dressed a certain way...not what you'd call designer, but more like the stuff they sell in frum stores. I would say it was a very in-the-box, narrow way of life where everyone did the same thing, dressed similarly, etc....

My home was unlike everyone else's, my mother marched to her own drumbeat, and she didn't care how our house looked, or how we looked. She told us over and over how we can be our own selves, and how we can be different, etc...she did things differently on purpose and was so proud of it.

But for whatever reason, I was more of a conformist, and her message was totally lost on me. I suffered from low self-esteem, I was also excluded from neighborhood activities, I felt left out and judged and looked down on by everyone around me. I longed to fit in.

As a parent, I'm not the biggest trend-follower, and there are a number of areas in my life where I do my own thing (probably thanks to my upbringing. Some things did seep in.) For myself, I've come a long way and I'm comfortable with myself and doing things as I like, I don't have to do what everyone else does. But I also try to look at my kids and see their point of view. They don't have to do everything my way. If they have a need to fit in a certain area, I try to show them that I care about that. They don't have to have every trend from top to bottom, nor do they have to stand out as different. We can find a happy medium.

I find it interesting that there are people here on imamother and also IRL who consider themselves open-minded, and yet that openmindedness only extends to their own POV. They think everyone has to do it their way, that it's THE right way and anything else is shallow. At least think about the fact that other people may experience it differently (and that could be your own children!). If you are really open-minded, it would extend to being able to see things the way someone else feels.

Ora in town

Tue, Jun 16 2020, 2:02 pm

amother [ Amber ] wrote:

What I was referring to was that "only stupid people buy brands...".

Of course teaching your children not to have respect for people who you perceive to be judgmental... is teaching your children to be judgmental.

Ah, sorry, this is a mistake in my text, because I rephrased it a few times. I will correct it.
I don't teacch my children not to have respect for judgmental people, I try to teach them not to be overly attentive to brands and external appearance.

As far as the "stupid" question goes, I anwered it: I don't think any more that everyone who wants a certain brand is stupid, because I recognised that it can be that a brand really offers value for money.

But I still think that people who buy a certain brand because "everyone else has it" or in order to be "with it", and not for the merits of the product itself, are not particularly bright.

This said, I have to confess my own sins in this regard:

When I was about 11, I switched schools. And a few students in my new class had yellow schoolbus-shaped lunch boxes... So I wanted one too... in order to "fit in"... and got one... and the first day I brought it to school the students from the higher grades made fun of me "oh look, there's one more of those" So I think this was bashert, it cured me for quite a while from such aspirations...