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.
You’re a shit parent if you’re just going to give in.
Bullying like that can be extremely traumatic for kids. Yeah it’s a shit situation, but I understand why they wouldn’t want to deal with it. kids are generally shitty people in middle school and use any excuse to bully each other. You basically have 3 choices 1) give in and get the thing, 2) let them get bullied for the rest of middle school, 3) harden them to the point where the other kids are fucking terrified of them.
As if parents and schools can’t intervene.
Shouldn’t those 2 groups specificallybe trying to educate children to do better?It doesn’t really matter if the schools do. And the bully’s parents are where they get it from. Kids don’t care about branding unless they’re instructed to do so by their families. I was bullied by a guy for years at school. Several adults tried to intervene, but it only stopped after I embedded a knife in the wall next to his head from across the room. Bullies like a reaction unless they think there’s a legitimate chance you’ll snap and murder them. Unfortunately that’s not advice you can pass to your children.
I believe there’s plenty that can be done.
And it may get the kids to react.
Maybe not with a knife but bullies aren’t generally very tough anyway when confronted.
I always find anti bullying measures kind of a waste of time. Adults will bully you way more, it just isn’t a swirly.
it’s making you fill out an application on a job prospects website even though the info is on the resume.
It’s every month when we pay rent.
It’s every paycheck we receive that doesn’t include our surplus labor value.
It’s a overdraft fee from your bank.
It’s ComcastXfinity purchasing your local government and ensuring you have no alternatives for an ISP.
It’s the “unprecedented call volume” you wait through that happens because the customer service phone line is purposely understaffed.
It’s your health insurance denying your claim.
It’s everywhere. Just because we hide it behind a curtain of the economic system doesn’t mean it changes the nature of these interactions.
If you want your kid to be successful, they should be a bully. Bullies are successful as fuck. Every parent should be teaching their child to be the biggest asshole douchebag bully ever.
Why would they be a shit parent for doing something so simple? The shoes aren’t that much more expensive unless they are talking like some limited edition nonsense. They don’t need to go that far, but just getting some brand name thing to avoid bullying is an easy thing.
Sounds like you’d be a shit parent if you had kids. “I can’t be arsed to help stop your getting bullied because it costs me a few dollars more.”
Certainly there are other lessons to be had here about standing up for oneself and not letting peer pressure dictate your life, but spending a few dollars for brand name sneakers is not something to call people shit parents over.
jeez what a horribly disgusting comment.
Mmkay 😂
dumb ass americunts are pathetic.
This slave attitude is what got you into a fascist state. And you fully deserve it.
Subservient, weak pacified pussies, bending over at any time, punching down to keep yourself in a little less shitty position.
Despicable, I’m glad your shithole is going down the shitter, the world will watch it it with joy.
You won’t be missed.😂 😂 😂
What’s the right move?
Who knows if it’s true. Kids can lie/exaggerate when they want stuff.
If it is true then wtf kind of school is this? I would go have a talk.
What if some other parent couldn’t afford them? Will he let his kid join the mob mentality and bully him?
This goes further than shoes.
Just buying the stuff to get done with it and letting this toxic environment fester is def not the right move.
But fuck it, I’m not raising his kid.If you think social bullying like this is some kind of rare thing I got some terrible news for you.
It goes far beyond just having pricey clothing, kids these days are bullied for not spending money in Fortnite. https://partner.sciencenorway.no/bullying-children-and-adolescents-computer-games/fear-being-bullied-children-pay-to-become-popular-in-video-games/2307469
It’s bad, even in countries like the UK where they have dress codes to try and address it, you’ll still he picked in for not having the right accessories.
It’s not rare, never said that.
My point is you should do something about it, not give in like this AH.
He is part of the problem pushing the problems to kids ho can’t afford it.
Fuck them. WTF is with all these egocentric comments?
I remember being a target of bullying in middle school. I specifically lobbied the school for months to get an alternative to recess because that’s when the worst of the bullying occurred. I was finally given permission to just chill in an empty classroom during that time and it was a significant improvement.
If spending a bit more on shoes helps give the kid some confidence it seems like a reasonable step to take. Maybe the kid will learn it was never about the shoes to begin with.
The fact is, middle school fucking sucks and the most parents can do is try to help their kids survive however they can. I still remember what one parent said to me once “middle school is the lowest circle of hell” and it was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment
So don’t adress the problem but give in, right.
And fuck the ones who can’t afford those shoes and get bullied.
You’re part of the problem, disgusting to hear thatBruh chill out. Do you really think that was an appropriate reaction to a comment by some rando on the internet?
Just block him, no need to reply to him.
Reviewing their post history you’re definitely right. Holy crap how can one person spew so much anger at nothing?
You’re just a shit person.
LOL your opinion means nothing
Lmao, so what does your opinion mean?
TF are you?
Some asshole getting blocked.
Bye assholeChrist, what a snowflake.
For not wanting kids to grow up as shallow marketing simps?
Let me guess, you wear expensive shoes don’t ya
I grew up with a tenuous grasp on the middle class and generally don’t buy much premium shit, despite being able to afford a life of luxury. My most expensive shoes are a $100 pair I wear with a suit. The shoes I wear most days are $25. You’re just an asshole, is all.
Yes, not giving in to toxic bullying for having less money makes you an asshole, right.
What if another parent doesn’t even have the choice to give in bcs they can’t afford it? too bad for the kid right?
You’re the POS here.Your feet deserve better shoes than that. The old adage goes, never cheap out on anything that goes between you and the ground - tires, shoes and beds are all worth buying a bit more up market than you usually might
I’m the asshole? Lmao you Litterally think bullying is all right and normal
Fighting one bully at a time by wearing the shoes they want you to wear /s
You’re the asshole for passing judgement on people who are trying to protect their kids from circumstances that are unknown to you.
Nah, you pick your battles. If the kid wants Nikes because that’s what everyone else has, then get him Nikes. I heard 10 years ago that Sketchers are for toddlers and old people… and from what I’ve seen that perception hasn’t changed.
Like it or not, we are social animals and fitting in is important, especially for children. When my daughter was a toddler we made it a point to NOT expose her to Paw Patrol because it is just blatant targeted marketing to children. It was a point of pride for us to be able to walk past Paw Patrol branded apple sauce and not have her begging for it. And then we sent her to preschool and after the first week she came home sad that all the other kids were playing Paw Patrol but she didn’t know any of the characters, so she couldn’t play. That was a real shitty day for me as a parent because that was my failing. We started letting her watch Paw Patrol (as well as other non-PBS kids shows) because pop culture is important. Same with fashion… not every kid needs to wear Nike, but they should be aware of what the trends are and have a say in what they get.
Edit: I’m glad Lemmy makes it easy to block trolls.
IDC about your BS explnation.
I despise people like you.
You are a weak consumer slave keeping these horrible practices alive by being weak and giving in.
I have no sympathy for your slave mentality.
You should be ashamed.
You are all that is wrong with the world.
I sort of want to do a stake out and bust out on the playground if he gets teased.
Phrasing!
I always thought they were old man shoes. LOL 🤣. I’m I the bully?
It’s okay I always hated Sketchers too. They were the shoe that you buy if you want to get bullied. Guess that’s still true today.
Well I’m in late 30s and high school was 20 years ago at this point, so I caved and finally bought a pair. Settled on their knockoff version of the Nike Flex and I couldn’t be more pleased. They’re just as comfortable as the real Flex, and 5x cheaper too. That said, part of me is still embarrassed to be wearing Sketchers. I wish the logo was easier to remove…
It’s not a Nike thing. It’s a kid thing. Kids are dicks, sorry
Because they learn from their families, usually. I remember the uppercrust side of my family kicking dirt from a family member’s grave onto his second wife’s grave. So classy.
It’s both. Kids suck and can be clique-like over the dumbest things. But these corporations also realize the amount they can make when their brand is a “status symbol”, and they purposely market around that.
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.
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.
Yep. Agreed
Most of my immediate family are on Android and use Signal. I’m happier this way.
I broke down and got an Iphone because everyone I know expects me to just magically know how to use any piece of tech. I got one just so I could help family with theirs and I can say I enjoy it more than any android I ever had.
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.
As an American I’m still not convinced.
Apple successfully sold themselves as a better choice, the “in”thing - to adults. Most adults I know have iPhones and the ones who don’t seem self-conscious about it. It might have partly to do with Android phones originally sold as the budget alternative. We’re the shallow ones.
Kids can take their cues from adults: they see iPhones as the “better”, more desired choice. But also take it to the next level, with teasing and bullying.
I find it hard to believe anyone cares about the color of text bubbles, especially since kids don’t use iMessage, despite all the media making that claim. It’s just an excuse, but the social stigma is real
As far as I hear every time: Yep
- A european
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.
That sounds awesome.
I mean, I can see it
Caprice (or Taurus?) police car and fingerless glove really date this photo.
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?
Eh, my dad wanted me to not be teased because of clothes or whatever. Except I saw through the bullshit and didn’t ask anything. So he basically forced me to wear the ugly shit he thought would look good. When all you can wear is ugly shit picked by your well-meaning parents, ya knaw.
“Demonstrative consumption” is the word. It hurt my social ties with those I’d want to talk to, but was ashamed of this, much more than fucking poverty probably would.
He had sort of a trauma from his own childhood, but that’s frankly no excuse because he didn’t even try to talk to me about this. I’d tell him it’s a school half-stacked with children of thieves (aka government workers, it’s not USA so I won’t take any bullshit about “hard-working administrators”, a different part of the world), so, first, I’d prefer to have clear cultural separation from them, second, I didn’t want to be there. The dumb fat pig moron wouldn’t listen, he thought me complaining is the problem so he should find some way for me to waste my resistance energy.
Well, those little jerks played a prank on him, which I did try to prevent, but as you’ve probably guessed, he thought my resistance to his good wise decisions to be the main threat, so they succeeded. He tried to blame it on me later. I do feel bad for him, but he deserved every bit.
OK, so much for memories.
“Demonstrative consumption” is the word
Ostentation?
Parents sometimes can’t help not wanting to put their kids through what traumatized themselves. At least he wasn’t trying to force you to ensure it because he had to go through it.
Yep.
Parents sometimes can’t help not wanting to put their kids through what traumatized themselves.
Except inverted.
Teach your kid to kick some teeth out with his Skechers. I have a feeling that your kid is going to get bullied no matter what he wears.
Well understood. His Mom was poor and bullied in school. So much so that she brings it up from time to time. She quickly bought him the shoes. I’m going to work on getting him Vans or Hookas in the future.
Parenting is hard. She didn’t just by him bullying resistant shoes, She also bought herself a break from dealing with the guilt or fear of her son getting teased. And that’s perfectly fine in my opinion, choose your fight because life has lots of them. Offering your son other options in the future will be good too. These are not Nike they’re better.
I see this angle and somewhat agree. Issue delt with. The nice things is he’s not going to be self conscious about them and can focus on school.
Is he gonna smoke the kids in his Hokas or is he gonna smoke with the other kids behind the bleachers with his hookah?
Both, it’s a dual-purpose item!
Is the kid actually getting bullied or going to be bullied or has his mom just instilled a fear of bullying in him that he’s using it as an excuse to have whatever he needs to fit in?
I’m guessing he’s just getting teased. Add that he’s nervous about middle school
He should be nervous about middle school, that’s when the teasing is at its zenith
So instead of falling for nike marketing, you want to fall for vans and hoka marketing?
Well he already fell for sketchers marketing lol. It’s all marketing apparently
Not Saucony Jazz they have no marketing no celebrity spokesperson but they are my official shoe. The cheapest most comfortable foot ware. An old school runner that gives me ( a fat man ) a jump on the pigs even in my old age
🏃♂️ 🚓
Now your the marketing. Congrats you done played yourself.
Dang it
My school everyone wore the same uniform. The only choice we could make was shoes or sandals 99.9% chose shoes. Sandal wearers got so much shit for it. It was a death sentence.
Kids find a way
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.
Kids are very materialistic.
When I was in middle school, I was probably the worst for me with the bullying. I came from a family that didn’t have a whole lot of money. Like even the cheap stuff we had to cut corners with. And well I was fully aware, that there was no real difference between what I had and what they had, it didn’t stop the consistent bullying. And the teachers never cared. The other students didn’t care in fact some of them would chime in too. And when that’s your life for several hours a day 5 days a week… You eventually just get to a breaking point.
I’ll never forget the day I basically had a complete emotional breakdown because we were doing back to school shopping at Target, and I saw one of those trapper keepers. With a weird designs on the outside. They were all the rage. And it was like eight bucks I think. My mom did end up buying it for me, but only because her soon-to-be 5th grader, collapsed in the isle crying. I don’t remember what I told her, but all I could think about was having that was going to make life just a little bit easier for me.
Kids can be real assholes to other kids.
I’m sorry you went through that. I’m glad you got your trapper keeper, though. Your mom made the right call.
I went through the same Nike crisis when I was in middle school. Had to have them because my friends had them. Instead I got to joke about my “genuine imitation Nikes” from Kmart.
It’s painful for kids that want to fit in because because they don’t have the wider and wiser perspective that most of us do as adults.
That’s the thing, crap kids are still going to bully.
Pay him self defense lessons. Beating up bullies is cooler than any snaekers
Man you have way more faith in adults than I do
No matter if you end up getting him a pair or not. Be sure he understands that such things as bullying people for having the “wrong” shoes is shallow clique nonsense and he should be better than that.
That’s really not fair or helpful to the poor kid. It may be nonsense but it’s very real and has a very real impact on his life. Those little monsters truly will go out of their way to make him miserable and sad as it may be keeping a low profile and reducing the number of things they can pick on can be a way not to be targeted. The idea that of telling him he “should be better than that” is just adding to the burden he’s already carrying of being forced to coexist with those little sociopaths. Is it somehow his fault?
It’s his fault if he start bullying other kids for wearing the wrong kind of shoes.
Or even just going along with it
Get him Hokas, tell him that’s what the rich actually wear.
man, when i was a kid i was bullied for reading at recess, or infodumping about inappropriate stuff, or being bad at running. kids these days are so materialist.
kids these days
I got bullied for not having Nike, Polo, Izod and Vans. That was over 4 decades ago.
sounds like you grew up in america.
