Argghh! It really is 100x harder dealing with this gender thing with boys. If you wish, read through
fredalina's post below for my son's brave words of advice to fred and her daughter Charlotte about picking a backpack.
Fast forward to this afternoon, and I'm looking on Land's End and LLBean for a new backpack for him, because the zipper finally broke on the otherwise excellent backpack he's had from LE since kindy.
What he really wants is
this backpack in the "starry night" pattern. But what he ultimately decided to get was
this one in royal blue. I brought up his brave words of advice to Charlotte, and he said, "But mom, it's not fair, because a girl can bring a camo backpack to school and no one will really tease her. If I bring that backpack, even though there's nothing really girly about it, you KNOW I'll hear about it. It's not fair!" He says this to me with tears in his eyes.
So, Bumpies, help a fellow out. Is the starry night backpack too girly?
High School English teacher and mom of 2 kids:
DD, born 9/06/00 -- 12th grade
DS, born 8/25/04 -- 7th grade
Re: S/O Camo backpack
Poor guy.
On the topic of boys and girls and colors:
DS loves pink and purple princess stuff, but his favorite color is orange. He and his 6 year old cousin (girl, very into princesses, but favorite color is blue) had an in-depth discussion about colors and gender recently. It started because he told her that he likes pink. She said, "But you're a boy." "Boys can like pink, " he said. The conversation went on for a few minutes, mostly discussing each of their friends' genders and favorite colors. At the end, his cousin summarized with, "I guess colors are for everyone!"
What about Jansport back packs? They have a lifetime warranty. I have had two in high school and the zipper broke on one of them and they were able to replace the zipper.
Is there anyway you can make a couple of trips with your DS to different stores and see which ones would he pick? Maybe he would pick something else that would be okay.