Parent Tip The Costume Edition

When our son was about 3 or 4 years old, he was obsessed with superheroes. His favorites were Spiderman, the Hulk and Buzz Lightyear. He played dress up and jumped off more pieces of furniture and tree branches than you could imagine. His grandma kept him in enough costumes that he had one for every day of the week.

I will never forget the time that he decided that he needed to wear his Spiderman costume to church. He was very stealth about when to spring it on us. He waited until the very last minute to change out of the church clothes that I had put out for him on his bed. He knew that if  he waited until we were out the door running late that he would have a better chance of not being discovered changing clothes.  His momma didn’t like to be late for church!

I don’t remember my exact words when I saw him come running down the hall in his costume AND mask, but my husband swears it was an audible gasp! How could he? We are late for church already! I’m the door greeter this week! Dear Lord, forgive me for letting my boy wear his costume to church! Everyone is going to think I’m a horrible mom. This is just awful.

For the sheer sake of time, I let him wear his costume. I was mortified. I was uncomfortable. I even thought of skipping communion and sneaking out the side door so whole entire congregation wouldn’t see him, or us because we would surely be ostracized for our lack of decorum!

When we got home from church, I called my mom to tell her what happened and how utterly embarrassed I was to have our son dressed like Spiderman for the morning  service. Of course she reassured me and simply said, “At least he’s going and having fun!”

This “Superhero Sunday” continued for about 2 or 3 months. It wasn’t always the same costume, he started mixing it up a little bit! I tried not to make too big a deal of it all in hopes that he would just forget about it. He finally did.

I was reminded by all of this the other day when I took the twins to see The Incredibles 2. My daughter Catherine won some Special Olympics gold medals in gymnastics a few weeks ago. We hung them all up in her room on a nail so she could see them all the time. She is so proud of them that she wears one or two like a necklace pretty much everyday. Most of the time she just shows them to her family and friends who she sees on a regular basis. For some reason, she felt the need to show the entire staff at the movies and told them in great detail about her medal. When I was a fairly new mom with an only child, I was so embarrassed by such public display! Fast forward two more kids and a lot more experiences and knowledge under my belt, and interactions like this don’t even phase me. Most of the movie employees asked her all about it and gave their congratulations and went about their day. Her teenage twin sister wasn’t even remotely embarrassed, unlike her mom was 16 years ago!

I saw one of the church members that was there to witness all of those “Superhero Sundays” at the grocery store not too long ago.  She was asking all about my son and how he’s doing in college and if he’s declared a major. She just knew he was going to major in theatre or costume design. She went on and on for several minutes and her face lit up as she recalled all the details of his Buzz Lightyear costume. It was her favorite!  She was amazed how it had batteries and lit up! (yes, grandma only bought the best!) She ended our conversation by letting me know that was the favorite part of her Sundays all those years ago. She couldn’t wait to see what our son would wear each week. She was impressed that we allowed him to be himself, even in church!  We said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch. And I cried tears of joy right there in the middle of the HEB frozen food section!

Motherhood is filled with such joys, self doubt, exhaustion, worry, especially during the teen years. I don’t think I’ll ever have all the answers. Do they know that it is basically trial and error?! How wonderful it is to get validation after all these years!

So if your kids wore their gold medals, costumes or any other item that might be deemed inappropriate to church or out in public today, good for you! That’s some great parenting right there!

To Infinity and Beyond!

 
Stay Sassy Y’all.