Did you try to teach him to be proud of his independence and differences? Maybe you can work with him on nice come backs against the teasing.
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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Mildly Infuriating
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Comebacks dont matter when you can just point at the shoes and call him broke (im not a teen anymore but come on guys lol, thats when you fit in to avoid issues or have issues, no magical way out)
There is a way out, but it involves not caring what classmates think. That's a high bar for a lot of kids, especially in middle school. Kids have to come to that conclusion on their own. No amount of adults telling them "you shouldn't care" will change things.
By high school I found social success after not caring what others thought. But I had been bullied my whole school experience up til that point, so by high school I had run out of fucks to give. In other words, I learned the hard way, but that's something every teen has to figure out for themselves.
The trick is not to care most of the time. Then the day you start caring and throwing punches they're not prepared
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But it’s not “his independence” if it wasn’t his choice to buy those shoes. You cannot be proud of your own choices when they weren’t your own choices.
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When I was young (in the late 80's) it was Air Jordans.
But, on top of being teased for not having them, you would also get jumped by kids who wanted to steal them from you.
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Yeah this is a Nike problem and not something that's been going on since the beginning of formalized group education.
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Is this still happening? It was happening 45 years ago, ffs.
It also happened to me 20 years ago so I guess nothing changes. If you wore Sketchers, you were going to get bullied.
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I tried, His Mom agreed and already bought him shoes.
One of mine is in high school, and as much as I hate the confirming culture, especially because it's led by morons and marketing, I choose the same path. I allowed my (now high school kid) to participate in all the awful crap that I would never do myself when she felt middle school pressure. She was in the popular kids group.
The caveat has been it all comes with extreme education from my end. Not demeaning or condescending. I over-preach about marketing/ads/influencers and constantly question why people make the choices they do. I question everything though. "How do you know that?" often leads back to tick tock.
In my experience, the OTHER kids are now getting smarter as they age. Mine is now able to live her life how she wants and is still with that same group , and the kids (I shit you not) look to her for purchasing advice. The vanity kinda goes away as their brains leave that dumb social hierarchy age.
Note: My kids are/were decked out in Nike. We live by the world headquarters and a good chunk of the kids' parents work there. If that isn't peer pressure, I dunno what is!
Pre-teen is the worst age for this. Just try to get your kid past this the best you can. Happens everywhere, eventually they will mature and learn.
Heck, this is always the plot in school movies.
No matter if you end up getting him a pair or not. Be sure he understands that such things as bullying people for having the “wrong” shoes is shallow clique nonsense and he should be better than that.
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I rock my Skechers, android phone, basic Casio watch, and drive my 2003 Suzuki.
I spend my money on stuff that works. Not stuff that's marketed.
I sense marketing bullshit, and it's such a strong turnoff for me.
I always thought they were old man shoes. LOL 🤣. I'm I the bully?
It's okay I always hated Sketchers too. They were the shoe that you buy if you want to get bullied. Guess that's still true today.
Well I'm in late 30s and high school was 20 years ago at this point, so I caved and finally bought a pair. Settled on their knockoff version of the Nike Flex and I couldn't be more pleased. They're just as comfortable as the real Flex, and 5x cheaper too. That said, part of me is still embarrassed to be wearing Sketchers. I wish the logo was easier to remove...
Time to find a good counterfeit.
I always had Chucks, not because I didn't wanna get teased mind you I just thought they were cool. Kids teased me for different things anyway.
But man, they never really lasted that long. One to one and a half years of daily use, and they doubled in price in the last ~15 years (which maybe isn't that much but I feel the quality went down a bit).
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man, when i was a kid i was bullied for reading at recess, or infodumping about inappropriate stuff, or being bad at running. kids these days are so materialist.
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