To think girls shouldn’t wear sandals in the park?

[Canyoucreateoneplease]

It’s been a beautiful day here so I was at the park. DS was on the climbing which is huge, designed for older kids, not toddlers.

There were so many girls crying and panicking getting across it because their sandals were getting trapped. Their feet were sliding out of them because of their angles, and their dresses were hindering them.

AIBU to think girls who are going to park should be put in sensible trainers and trousers? The boys were managing with ease because they were suitably dressed. A substantial amount of the girls were struggling because of what they were wearing.

Come on then. What did you wear?

I know it wasn’t these type of sandals.

Ooo, policing a woman’s language, eh? Tut tut.

Yeah, hinder the girls. It’ll have no impact.

I can only assume the posters screaming that no girls wear inappropriate sandals to the park and also don’t struggle in these sandals are the very parents idiotically dressing their daughters in them.

I am right though. The girls were struggling because the parents are foolish enough to put them in shoes that aren’t supportive, barely fit and which hindered them. I felt sorry for them.

I assume that your 14 year old daughter would laugh at you if you tried to insist she wore strappy sandals to kayak. But at five she’d have likely trusted your judgement.

Yes, let’s send all of our children outside to play barefoot. Can’t be any downsides if you’ve heard they do it in South America

😂 She’s a sprinter! How on earth would nails affect sprinting?

It’s because they’re refusing to acknowledge that girls are (and have been for centuries) disadvantaged by their clothes.

No idea why they want to deny it though. Maybe because they want to keep putting their girls in these sandals.

It’s about the shoes fit and quality. My DS wears sandals in hot days and doesn’t have a problem. But they fit properly, so his feet don’t slide up and down and the sandals hold well his foot and ankle. Girls can have the same, why is it a gender problem?

Because of the vast difference between boy and girls’ sandals. You can get the hardy, supportive type that are designed for boys for girls, but those struggling were in the type I linked to earlier. Boys are not put into that type of flimsy, ill fitting, unsupportive sandal.

Policing, no. I don't have the authority. Criticising, absolutely. Your language and your attitude.

You obviously never met my DD at 5!

There are equally good sandals for girls from some brands that produce good shoes. And there are equally flimsy sandals for boys. There are also a lot of gender neutral shoes. I think I can agree with you if you rephrase it with “children should not wear flimsy sandals in playground”.
Girls should not wear sandals sounds a lot a gender issue and sounds to me wrong. Like girls should not be free to wear what they want when they want and where they want. I cannot agree with that.

Five year olds often want sweets and cake and to stay up late but we don’t let them do what they please because as their parents we know better. Yet this doesn’t extend to ensuring they’ve got the right shoes on. But only for girls.

Why don’t you just mind your own business?

Where are the flimsy boys’ sandals?

This issue affects girls much more than it does boys. Boys simply are not dressed in sandals that slide off their feet.

It is a gender issue. The inappropriate shoes prevent girls from climbing as well as they could, running as fast as they could, kicking a ball as hard as they could. The girls get upset and think ‘I can’t do this’. They’re too young to link it to their footwear compared to the boys’.

And then the boys think ‘girls are much worse at sport than the boys’.

It all starts so early and by putting girls into strappy sandals for the park we are hindering them.

I can imagine that being said to those who pointed out that corsets were hindering women.

If you’re a parent putting your daughters in these sandals I can understand why you’re defensive.

I think people should just mind their own business, really.

As a child of the 1980s, at primary school I had to wear a skirt every day to school and in summer we all wore sandals to school too. We had a massive metal climbing frame in the playground and we played on it all the time, skirts and sandals and all.

Also I'm laughing at the claim that all girls' sandals are flimsy and strappy. The current sandal trend is for chunky and 'ugly' - think Doc Marten sandals etc.

Not really convinced about people who 'put their children in' things once the child's past the age of about six or seven, either. I'd say that there comes a point where they get to choose for themselves whether they want to wear sandals on a hot day at the park or not, to be honest.

My daughter wears what she wants. If her choice inhibits her, the lesson is learned.
I don’t understand why you feel the right to dictate?

edited for tech issues

Ah yes, inanimate objects have disadvantaged girls for millennia. Not the humans that crafted narratives around them. Got it 👍🏽

And ‘keep putting their girls in sandals’. Again, it’s sad you seem to genuinely believe girls can’t and aren’t making their own decisions about what they wear. You sound almost desperate to make that true. Bleak.

I don’t think anyone said all.

Yes, the 80s. A great standard to set for how girls now are raised.

I think the OP and her supporters don't seem to think children should have any decision making power, particularly girl children, and it's up to them to tell their children if they feel comfortable and/or safe. They just put the clothes on their children, as if they were dolls. They see girls at the park wearing the clothes they like, which aren't the clothes they deem to be park appropriate, and think, "What silly parents, to have put those impractical clothes on those poor girls."

That mindset is completely alien to those of us who have a less controlling parenting style and trust our girls (and boys for that matter) to be able to make decisions for themselves about what they feel good in when they move.

And to justify it, they make up mad stories about multiples girls trapped on a climbing frame by terrible sandals, screaming for their parents, like so many flies caught helplessly in a spider's web. It would be quite a spectacle, had it ever happened.

Agree that kids should be dressed for whatever activities they are doing: common sense.

Well, it’s stating the truth, isn’t it? Why does someone saying the obvious on an anonymous forum bother you?

As an aside, would you let your daughter wear her bathing costume to go out in winter? Or put a fur lined dress on on holiday? Or wear pyjamas to school?

Of course not. They don’t wear what they want. They wear what we allow.