Summer is over and the kids are flocking back to school, but not before a trip or two to the store for that annual end-of-summer ritual — back-to-school shopping.
Back-to-school shopping generally covers two categories: school supplies and new clothes. Both present a challenge to the dutiful parents trying desperately to do the right thing by their offspring.
A word of advice to parents when it comes to buying school supplies: Don’t sweat it. There is no way you can get this one right. You would think that buying a few pencils, some glue sticks and a binder would be a simple task, right?
Nope! Each purchase presents a daunting number of decisions to be made and ways to get it wrong.
Take the binder, for instance. Binders come in a variety of colors and forms, sporting accessories such as zippers, phone pockets, or built-in planners to keep the students organized. They range in size from half-an-inch to six inches, and believe me, size matters. A couple of inches here or there make all the difference in a binder’s usefulness. If it’s too thin, the school papers will fill it to bursting in the first month of classes and it will explode by Christmas. If it’s too fat, it will overburden the backpack, bowing the child down like Quasimodo. Either way, the wrong-sized binder is an embarrassment to the student.
Some teachers specify the size of binder needed, to the vast relief of eager-to-please parents. But this direction usually comes after school has already begun; after the back-to-school sales are finished; and after the binder has already been purchased. Timing is everything when it comes to back-to-school shopping. The best you as a parent can do is go with the flow, buy something that you like yourself so you can take it off your child’s hands when a switch is needed, and save your energy for the main event: the back-to-school clothes.
Back-to-school clothes shopping is always a challenge in a small town with one main store carrying children’s clothing. There is the very real potential that your child will arrive at school on the first day wearing the exact same outfit as someone else in the class. When the kids are young that’s not a problem — they’re happy to have something to wear on “twin day.” But for older kids who hope to express their individuality through their clothing, having the same clever T-shirt as two other students in math class is not cool. The cool factor of the shirt decreases in direct proportion to the number of kids who wear the shirt on any given day. And if a teacher wears it, forget it — that shirt is history!
Some students are lucky enough to wear school uniforms. They don’t have to worry about showing up to school in the same outfit as a friend, because every kid in the school is wearing the exact same thing. It’s all twin day, all the time!
When it comes to buying back-to-school clothes, once again, timing is everything. If you can hit the sales you can save hundreds of dollars on classy new clothes. But if you procrastinate, you might discover that the store shelves are full of witches’ dresses and superhero cloaks to the exclusion of all else. Your child might be able to pass off a Hogwarts ensemble as bona fide back-to-school clothing, but chances are that the Wonder Woman costume will fall afoul of most school dress codes.
Another strategy is to complete your back-to-school shopping online from the comfort of your own home. Of course, it can take more time and energy to scroll through the dizzying array of inappropriate options than it takes for the shipped item to arrive in the mail. Meanwhile the first day of school is a distant memory, and the kid is already making out a Christmas wish list. Maybe Santa can do a better job at the back-to-school shopping!
In the end, the best thing a parent can do is to keep things in perspective. After the first day is over, the new clothes will make their way to the laundry and come out indistinguishable from the old favorites. The glue sticks will get used up, and even the perfectly-sized binder will have that one annoying ring that doesn’t close properly. But never fear — you get a second chance to excel at shopping for your kids! They’ll need Halloween costumes sooner rather than later, you know.
• Peggy McKee Barnhill is a wife, mother and debut author who writes cozy mysteries under the name “Greta McKennan.” Her first novel, Uniformly Dead, is available at Hearthside Books. She likes to look at the bright side of life.
