Fashion-forward babies (and the mothers who make them)

There’s no argument that a parent’s role is to guide their child on how to best express and present themselves to the world.

However, without even realising it, sometimes when parents impose some behaviour on children, we are subconsciously thinking about how the said behaviour will reflect on us.

In the process – and especially if the behaviour is something that can be compromised on – we might deny our children the joy and liberation of expressing their own emerging sense of self.

Dressing and sense of fashion is one of the ways that society judges us, and because our children reflect on us by extension, it then follows that this is the one area where we are prone to subjecting our children to unnecessary standards in order to validate our standing in society.

This is the stuff that fashionista babies are born of.

Children will be children

Every celebrity yummy-mummy we idolise tugs along a child that looks like a Gap Kids advertisement. Yummy-mummies tend to forget that their children are just that: children.

This was best illustrated when, about a fortnight ago, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West took their baby to Kanye’s fashion line opening.

Appearing to have been born for the sole purpose of reflecting her parent’s image, the poor baby was expected to sit still and behave like the rest of the chic crowd.

Instead, the world media watched North West throw decorum to the wind and let out a long, heartfelt tantrum.

No, she didn’t seem to care that Beyonce and Anna Wintour (Vogue editor) were seated right beside her. She’s a child. She doesn’t care. 

Letting go of the fashion reins

When my yummy-mummy friend had her 10-month-old daughter’s ears pierced, the poor baby couldn’t stop touching and tugging at the studs.

Even when the ear got irritated and infected, mum tried everything else to salvage the situation without having to give up the earrings – including sternly forbidding the child not to touch her ears.

Of course it didn’t work – 10-month-old babies are probably more interested in eating the earrings (the same way she eats face powder and house plants) than having them sit pretty in her ears.

As they grow older and start to form a sense of individual style, mummy-child fashion feuds begin. You might want to dress your adolescent girl in lacy dresses, but what if she prefers khaki trousers and boots?

The lesson here is to learn to give fashion latitude early – and let the child express herself reasonably, no matter your urge to make her toe your line.

Lessons learnt

Don’t fall for the buzz: Oscar Wilde said, ‘Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months’. We could all probably do just fine without buying into the illusion. 

Young children just don’t care: All they need on a sunny day out are a comfortable t-shirt, pants and shoes practical enough to frolic in the mud, ride bikes, climb trees, chase bugs and run away from dogs.  

Older children need guidelines: It’s our duty to learn when to compromise and when to steer them towards a realistic, presentable image.

Set up a family value/decorum system and make sure they don’t deviate too far from it (e.g. you can agree with your preteen that short shorts are okay in the house and when hanging out with her friends but are not acceptable in church or when visiting her grandparents, etc.).

They are not mini adults: There’s nothing more disturbing than to see a four-year-old struggling to walk in heels or walking around looking like a little Madonna. Sexualising children should be a crime.  

It’s never that serious: If he prefers a Barney the Dinosaur sweatshirt over a suit coat, don’t deny him that simple joy. If they gravitate towards Crocs (God forbid!) over genuine leather moccasins, let it be.