To reuse girls clothes on a boy

[BubsMaw]

Hi all, I'm new around here and this is my first post, here goes...

I have a DD (4yo) and a baby DS. I have all of DD's clothes in great condition, available for reuse, but in varying degrees of girlish colours/styles. Where should I draw the line in reusing them? If I had only my own opinion to consider I'd reuse the whole dang lot, as I hate waste and don't like to reinforce gender stereotypes (a lot of her baby stuff is fairly neutral, but as she's got older she's preferred very girly pinks, dresses etc). My main concern is that I don't want DS to look back with embarrasment or resentment, but I'd be gutted to buy the whole lot over again.

To be specific, what do you think of a boy using the following... pink vests/bedding/PJs - nobody will see them? Jeans with little flower detail, or brown clothes with pink trim, lilac wellies, pink bike/scooter - cost a fortune! etc. Thanks!

YANBU.I would probably draw the line at the lilac wellies but the rest sounds fine to me. Just make sure there are no photos of him wearing anything too feminine to haunt him when he's older!

would certainly use the PJ's vests and bedding - like you say noone will see them!

I personally wouldnt put a boy in something pink or mainly pink, but surely a little flower wouldnt hurt or a tiny bit of pink trim

as for the wellies, bike/scooter, definatly, like you say they cost a fortune.

as soon as he is old enough to choose his clothes then maybe pop the frilly dresses away!

OMgoodness I can't believe you're even ASKING this question. He's a BABY! A hundred years ago, all infants were dressed the same, in dresses, up til the age of 3 or 4.

Go ahead and enjoy having a little one dressed brightly in a non-gendered way, like a little one should be, rather than a camouflage-and-skull bedecked mini-man, like you'll probably have once he turns 5.

No-one ever looks back and resents how they were dressed as a baby, surely?

I still dress DS in girls clothes, as long as they're uni-sex-ish (which sadly, fewer and fewer are) - and he's 4.5yrs!

yanbu. Definately use the pink bedding / vests /sleepy suits on ds. But you might want to avoid taking too many photos of your ds in 'girls' clothes.

I love re-using ds's old clothes on dd. She's 19 months and only just got her first pink sleep suit.

dd is wearing loads of ds's clothes... I know it's not quite the same, but she's always in blue. Luckily she looks really girly anyway. But YANBU, like the others said, perhaps hold back on the lilac wellies but otherwise the rest sounds fine.

I would use everything you describe bar the frilly dresses. Hang what anyone else thinks. Your son will not look back and think any the worse of you for it. I think we may be facing this situation soon as I am PG again and I suppose I have a 50% chance of a boy!

use as much as you can why let it waste. My sis and i have been having this discussion as she has just bought her ds pink shoes- at his request- he's cross that he got as red scooter for xmas not a pink one.

i have 2 ds and one dd but i bought a lot of unisex stuff for her which the boys now use - i particularly like a pink stripy jumper that looks great on ds1`

I'm reusing loads of DS's stuff on DD. I keep thinking "stick a pink t-shirt on with it and that'll be fine..." Bit easier with little girls maybe?

I'd reuse the jeans, bedding, nightware etc but wouldn't put a little boy in dresses.

YANBu to use your dd pink pjs, bedding or vests that cannot really be seen, or brown clothing with pink stitching or things that are for girls that are also unisexish. However imo YABU to to dress your ds in pink clothes, dresses, skirts,cardigans etc. Why dont you g to NCT nearly new sales, charity shops or supermarket clothes shops for good deals on kids clothing as when he gets older he cannot get away with wearing your dds old clothes.

Get on with it. DD aged 23 and DS aged 18 are here and I just asked em coz DS wore pink till he was 10 months.

they both laughed. They are ace kids.

This reminded me of my ds using his sisters bike which was pink when he was 4, pink was his favourite colour until he got teased when he started school by some older kids so we bought a can of green spray paint and he was happy.
You will get away with it until he is more aware but i've got 2 older girls and 2 younger boys and have always bought neutral vests t'shirts, raincoats in navy, green wellies and been able to pass on without any hassle.

But why would you want to? There are lovely boys clothes around.

Clothing for girls tends to have pink / flowers / butterflies etc on and is not suitable for boys!

Why are butterflies and flowers not suitable for boys, really?? Or, for that matter, stars, suns, horses, cats, the colour purple, yellow, orange, etc etc?? They're naturally occuring things...it's just our weird society that's made them into 'girly' things. I heard a program on Radio 4 about how, in many countries, and in the UK til about the 1940's, pink was for boys and blue for girls, as blue represented the Virgin Mary.

mud everything else on your list was fine - apart from the butterflies and roses

It's funny because you're all sounding so reasonable and sensible to me. What prompted my question is that we just spent the weekend with good friends who also have a baby boy and older daughter, and when it came bed time I noticed their boy had a new sleeping bag in boy blue tones, my wee boy went to bed in his pink and white one, we had the discussion as per my OP. Their stance was that they wouldn't ever be putting anything pink on their son, which got me fretting! (it seems even a sleeping bag FFS!)

I would use as much as you can. I have two older DDs and a 1yr old DS, and saw no problem with pink grobags and bedding, pink vests, PJs, sleepsuits, cardigans and jumpers which had an element of pink in them etc. He wears tights too (how on earth do you dress baby boys without tights under their trousers in winter - a mystery to me, unless the poor things are constantly cold). However I did try to keep his daytime outer layers of clothing vaguely boyish! E.g. no pink dresses! Pretty much all of my 'boys' clothes were from friends though. Do you have any friends who have boys? Just ask if you can borrow some stuff - that's what I did and I was so inundated with kit that suddenly all the pink went out of the window. I bought a laundry marker pen and put an initial on the inside of everything so I can return it to the right person after DS has outgrown it. I'm also now overjoyed to discover that a friend of mine with 3 boys is expecting a girl - we are planning a big clothes swap!

I do have a nephew and have been given a pile of his clothes, they're out of season for the moment though. As DS gets bigger they'll hopefully converge on sizes and seasons. I agree Nelly, DS has been wearing tights these cold days!! They should def. be available in boy colours!

They are, in Tescos i saw white and navey blue tights in the girls section but can be for a boy too. My friend bought her little boys tights from Tesco.

My DS is coming up two and wears DDs (now 4) vests - some are fairly innocuous, some say "princess" or "fairy"!
He loves the princess vests, always asks to wear them. He also has some of her old (red) shoes, tights in winter and jeans etc.
I don't do dresses except for messing about dressing up at home (he is a cute boy but a stunningly gorgeous girl!)

I got proper 'boy tights' in Lidl once - they had a car motif on them. Can only assume boy tights are more normal in Germany/wherever Lidl originates. I've also bought unisex stripy ones for him in H&M.

If everyone said "I don't believe in gender stereotypes" and actually practised what they preached, i.e. by dressing kids in anything regardless of some arbitrary label of "girls" or "boys", we wouldn't have this nonsense of people worrying in the first place.

I don't intend to dress any of my kids, boys or girls, in dresses or skirts because I don't personally like them. [Unless, that is, I happen to get the clothes as gifts.] But if, when they get old enough to choose, my boy chooses a skirt or a dress? Yeah, he's going to get to wear it. I wish more people would grasp that great opportunity before they get to school where they say they like things because they actually do, not because other people tell them they should.

What is the worst that people think is going to happen if you put a boy in pink or even, god forbid, a dress? Mocking and ridicule from others? Well, that's their own issues, not yours. People just rolling over and being a doormat saying "it's too hard to go against the tide" just makes it that much easier for the miserable people to carry on putting their own views onto others. I'm not saying put your boy in a dress if it's going to get him beaten up, but if the worst that will happen is a bit of teasing, I'd much rather teach my kid to cope with the teasing and that it's all nonsense than submit to it and go along with the teasers' views of what is 'right'.

And I say all this as someone who has been getting flack for being 'too masculine' since I was a kid. I've been sneered at and shoued at by my own father and I've lost count of the amount of times I've been called a dyke. But I don't give a toss because I prefer boxer shorts, short hair suits me more, and I refuse to live my life according to someone else's opinion.

Gets off soapbox Apologies in advance if this sounds ranty, but this is one of my pet hates, people saying they don't believe in following gender stereotypes and then doing exactly that.

OP: dress your kid in whatever servicable clothes you have to hand. If you bring him up with the same attitude you have [i.e. it's decent and a bit of pink will not turn him into a girl] he will realise long before he's an adult that his baby pictures are just cute baby pictures, and the clothes will merit nothing more than perhaps a giggle.

"What is the worst that people think is going to happen if you put a boy in pink or even, god forbid, a dress? Mocking and ridicule from others? Well, that's their own issues, not yours."

Well I think you have to be realistic about the effects of "mocking and ridicule" one a person's self esteem. I have been bullied, and the effects are far reaching, sometimes devestating.

I'm not disagreeing with the OP in principle, and yes, we should be fighting gender stereotypes...but if you feel so strongly, why does your DD have so much pink stuff in the first place??

Waits for Spidermama to turn up.

Yeah, we have to be realistic. I mean, there are obviously degrees of teasing and ridicule, and if you recognise it's not going to be worth it, then to go there is pointless. But it's like with anything - you need to evaluate the risk. There are certain streets you'd be happy for your DCs to play out on and others you wouldn't, you know? (Assuming of course they are of certain age and ability.)

I'm not downplaying the effects of bullying, far from it (I've been there too and it can screw you up). But I know that if I hadn't gone through that myself and got the right messages from key people - in my case my extended family - that I would not be the person I am today, and would not be as happy as I am today to say "hang it, I'll do what I like as long as it's not hurting anyone".

I dislike intensely the idea that we should wrap our DCs up in cotton wool and protect them from the couple of comments they might get from the kid down the road if we get a boy a pink bike, y'know?

Nobody will see him when he is sleeping and he is presumably too young to notice.

Buy proper boy clothes for going out in public and use the girl clothes in the privacy of your own home.