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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Congrats, there’s a good chance you just bought into being part of the problem. Your son is probably now a card-carrying member of the group that teases other kids for being less than.
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.
Man you have way more faith in adults than I do
One of my good runner friends (3000+ miles a year and owns 100+ pairs of shoes) is the biggest sketchers fans I know of. Apparently their good running shoes aren’t even cheap anymore, like $110+.
I imagine these kids aren’t wearing super shoes anyway, or else they would know the puma’s are faster
Nice
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!
I love Skechers.
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.
It’s still air Jordans because Nike is a joke.
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?
I was too lazy to actually go find the specific warehouses. I just downloaded taobao, it’s partially in English now. I’ve seen and saved a few tiktoks with descriptions of the locations and which places do which items / brands. I just genuinely don’t have time to deep dive and do proper research, though.
Probably aliexpress or something
Nah, you usually have to direct message them via WhatsApp. You will have to pay like 15 or 20 shipping, so people usually buy a few pairs at a time.
There are specific marketplaces for things, but they tend to only sell bulk. Aliexpress is all resellers.
I am not even sure if the ones I posted sell exact knock offs or not though.
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?
Happened to me. Got Nikes, got teased because they were not a good enough model. Kids are monsters.
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.
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.
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.
Same for iphone. Fuck Apple.
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
Yeah, I agree! Sadly the days of fighting back are over. I have faith he can scrap is needed
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
