Son hates dressing up today will be awful

[Inliverpool1]

Do I persuade him to wear the hat in the cat costume I’ve bought against his better judgement or sending him in uniform knowing everyone else will be dressed up.
This nonsense raises my blood pressure every bloody year

3 boys are dressed in football kits here, one in rugby. Whatever they feel comfortable in.

@Stevienickssleeves Yes, I'm well aware of why they are closing.

Lucky you that you have a library to use. Many don't.

Point is library or not, it's bloody moronic to spend more money on a costume than a book.

Neither of mine do dress up days. In fact my eldest even refused non-school uniform day and just went in in his normal M&S trousers and school sweatshirt.

As long as he's fine with it, I would let him do his thing.

My son hated dressing up. I never forget the year he announced he was going as "me, from my diary"

LOL. With lateral thinking like that, that boy will go far

It was only infants school for my kids - schools should know when it's no longer cute. Far better to do what my DD's upper school did a few months back - jeans for genes day, complete with science lessons on genetic disease

One year my DC had to dress up around six times: WBD, Red Nose Day, KS2 school topic day where they all dressed as from WW2, Christmas jumper day, long term staff member’s 60th birthday/retirement, and Halloween. I was well cheesed off. Christmas jumper day is a particular bugbear.
This has eased off a little now, but dressing up still annoys me. Our WBD has been postponed until Monday and I’m away this weekend, so have ordered a costume on amazon. Got it big so it will do the next two years, too!

I can't believe they are still doing this at schools! It can't be compulsory surely?
I fought this battle 15 years ago, DS is 21 now!

He always loathed dressing up in any shape or form and I saw no educational benefit to forcing him to dress up. So he just went in his uniform. Why do teachers think every child likes dressing up?

Mines 9 with suspected asd. Was going to go as billionaire boy. Excited, printed out money to go with it etc. Meltdown this morning. Ended up going in school uniform. I wouldn’t mind, the “costume” consisted of a pair of jeans from his wardrobe and a white t shirt which I had bought. Give me bloody strength!!

I agree with a pp that he's too old for Cat in a hat.

I've seen some amazing costumes, but a few years ago a winner was a boy in a dress. He just wore his sisters dress.

Last year the school said Come as an astronaut.Wtf. Hard costume to make and nothing to with anyone's favourite book.

Send him in his own clothes. There are plenty of book characters that wear everyday clothes. Or even a football kit if he prefers.

The Cat in the Hat is creepy and repulsive - if he doesn't like costumes that probably isn't the one to start with.

We've had come as an astronaut last month. Also this year we've had come as a pirate, come as a princess/knight/king (DD2 went as a dragon to eat them all - her choice), Victorian schoolchild... thankfully the bulk of the school didn't do WBD dressing up today - but one child's year group are doing Roald Dahl as their topic so did do. I'm lucky in that my mum's forever raking around for bargains and picks up a lot of dress up stuff from the charity shops and reduced in the aftermath of dress up events - so we actually did have all of the above, bar the astronaut, in the dress up box already - DD1's gone in as the BFG as my mum had found it cheap somewhere ages ago. The inflatable novelty feet have already deflated and I was scrounging sellotape from the school office for puncture repairs. Mine dress up a lot anyway though - and we have lots of dressing up clothes to sneakily work on DD2's fine motor skills dressing and undressing herself.

As for spending more on outfits than books - if that's meant to be a sneer... most of the kids' books (and they have bloody hundreds - despite me just sending a load of picture book ones into school recently) came from charity shops (or our Tesco second hand book shelf honesty box for charity thing) so were like 10-50p each. The amount I've spent on books does not correlate to the quantity and quality of the ones in the house (apart from the fecking Rainbow Fairies - they're absolute shite but the kids love 'em).

My son has autism and I fucking HATE the fucking dress up for World Book Day. He winds up in major meltdown either way. I think it's fucking wasteful, too, and would rather they bring in a book.

Oh yeah we've also had dress ups as come in red for Chinese New Year (cue lots of Spidermen)... come dressed as the country's flag your class are studying for international week... come as a Minion randomly dropped on us at short notice (thankfully we had some hideously tasteless Minion leggings Grandma had bought us).... come as your favourite animal... come as a Disney character (we had a dalmatian outfit from a dancing show that did both of those).

I fecking hate dress up days.

I hated dressing up too. Went in dressed as a tree once - brown trousers (ok it was the early 80s - they were vile but never mind) and a green T-shirt.

Me from my diary - absolute genius

DD3 went through her Rainbow Fairy collection till she found one where Rachel is wearing clothes very similar to her own. She has taken the book in with her as proof.

So pleased to see it's not just us taking this approach.

My DD is year 6 and has gone as 'Summer' from the book Wonder, jeans, t-shirt, pretty much gone as herself really as she's a carbon copy of the actress in the film. She took a copy of the book too as evidence! She feels too old for dress up and also, lots of children's book characters I don't think she really identifies with as they are 99% white.

Ds didn't dress up. Lots of kids in uniform today. He wasn't bothered dressing up so I definitely didn't encourage it.

went as 'name' and the normal sized nectarine

This is fucking brilliant

DDs secondary school is doing world book day tomorrow. DD (y7) is all excited about it and is going as an assassin from her favourite book series (black clothes, black jacket and a black cloak from when she was Tiffany Aching last year. Plus a wooden sword and dagger which may be confiscated...). She's dressed up every evening this week, just to make sure her costume is right! A (female) friend in the 6th form is going as the man in black from Princess Bride, something we did with DS years ago when we realised we hadn't got a costume the night before WBD and he wanted to dress up. Black clothes, black mask and same wooden sword. Neither of my teenage boys are interested or bothering this year though, even though their school is doing something.

Mine likes dress up days and wears his costumes, but we always make sure they’re easy to get off (for example he was a Norman Knight for Castles day last year - he had grey trousers and tshirt on, then a helmet and a tunic over the top, apparently he hung out in the grey stuff all day and only put the tunic on for the parade. Likewise his wbd costume is Robin Hood. Green underneath with a tunic. I am certain he will wear his green stuff all day and take the tunic off)
However my friends son can’t stand fancy dress. So she’s sending him as “Julian” from the famous five in a tshirt and grey school trousers and a knitted jumper.
My other friends child is wearing a Superman tshirt with jeans, she’s slicked his hair back and given him an old cheap camera on a strap. He’s Jimmy Olsen from the superman comic series.
There’s so many things you can do these days - muggles from Harry Potter are easy. Put him in a pair of black trousers and a white shirt “the muggle prime minister” in Harry Potter.....

Dds school does very few dress up days. They only celebrate about one book day in three. They normally do really simple things like spots or stripes for Red Nose Day or pyjama day. The most difficult has been Victorian day for a school trip. Reading what some people have written, I’m so glad.

They also don’t have competitive costume wearing so I’ve spent very little on costumes and normally piece it together with a bunch of stuff we have or improvise. I sewed a pillow case for a cape on a dress up costume one year for superhero day and dd coloured in a print out of the character which I also sewed on.

Mind you noting we as bad as the year ds 1_primary school was celebrating its 50th anniversary and 're kids had to wear outfits from the 1960,s with about two days notice at least there are outfits in the shops for WBD even though I hate it .

Hope your DS went in as himself. MY Ds hates it too. They stopped it our school a few years ago because they ended up with 300 Harry Potters and Hermione Grangers going round poking each other with plastic wands. Most of the kids hadn't even read the books. They have book swap day instead. Thankfully.

1 DS went as Harry Potter - wearing his brother's gryffindor t-shirt and a pair of glasses he got free when he went on a school trip to the studio tour.

My youngest is going as Ron Weasley - I've sewn an R onto a jumper we already had and he has jeans.

The others don't do it now, though as youngsters they were easy as they loved dressing up so had lots to choose from - and as twins obviously had to go as Fred and George Weasley one year!