My youngest son, Jordan never really cared about the clothes he wore.

He would get up and put on just any old thing; A pair of shorts with a sweater, put purple with red or some other colors that in no way went together. He didn’t care if the clothing was raggedy, or wrinkled or dirty. He once told me, after I’d gotten on his case for dressing himself so poorly, that clothing doesn’t matter. He said ithe only purpose for clothing is to cover yourself so other people don’t have to look at you naked. I really could argue with that. And I figured that arguing would only make it worse. So, I just let him wear whatever he wanted. I know most of the time when we went some place folks would be staring at me and wondering what kind of mother lets her child come out of the house dressed like that. Especially since I love clothing and if we were out I was probably dressed to the nines, looking good. Then there was this little raggedy Andy by my side.

My only rule for Jordan was that his clothing be clean.

 For years Jordan would just pull on clothing to cover himself without giving any thought to whether it matched or was torn and forget fashion, that was the last thing on his mind.

On the other hand, his brother has always been a clothes horse. He took pride in selecting just the right out fit. It had to be fashionable. It had to be cool. He had a style. Not Jordan. Jordan always looked a mess and I think he liked looking that way.

 But when he got to high school, suddenly he started to care about how he looked. Before then I would buy all his clothing and whatever I bought for him to wear, that is what he would wear,. He hated shopping unless he was in a book store. 

The child always had lots of clothing though because I was always trying to get him to care about the way he looked. If I dressed him. He would look great. If he dressed himself, well, disaster.

But I noticed this year he got into wearing skinny jeans, creased khakis, fitted T-shirts, cotton cardigans, vests and matching his shoes to whatever he was wearing. And, the boy really loves leather jackets. He has about three of them.

I don’t know what happened. Maybe it’s girls, or maybe he just started to grow up . But he definitely has a real style now. Even his brother was blown away when he came home this Christmas and saw his brother wearing clean, pressed, matching and fashionable clothing.  No more Pokemon T-shirts.

Then it happened. This weekend Jordan went shopping all by himself. He went to the H&M on the Plaza with a $100 gift card he’d gotten for Christmas. I could hardly believe it.

The boy came back with a new pair of jeans, two really nice T-shirts and a cardigan. Now he’d looking for a pair of brown leather gloves. I love the way he’s dressing. He looks really mature, grown up. No baggy jeans or over-sized shirts. He never really got into that urban gear style. Trey went through the phase briefly. But he prefers wearing a sports jacket and tie, dress shirts and suit vests.

I think it goes back to something I’ve learned over the years. Sometimes we, meaning us parents, are in too much of a hurry for our kids to behave a certain way. We push them too soon to walk, talk, potty train. We think they should be at a certain place in their development at a certain age and if they are not there we think maybe there is something wrong. But the truth child development is not that black and white. Some kids are fast to potty train while others take a bit longer. Some are fast to talk, walk care about the way they look others take a little longer, but they get there in time.

Jordan was fast to potty train, slow to care about whether his clothing matched. But he’s got it now. And I must say, he looks great going to school every morning. I especially love the blue jeans, white shirt, black vest look. It rocks.