Australia

Okay, so sorry for being extremely rude below. This topic (about the oh so poor parents raising kids) hits home hard, and is a trigger.

dealing with a mortgage and trying to juggle both parents work schedules, drop offs and after school sports

Clothing is one of the most important factors that make up the identity of someone. Humans aren't supposed to be stormtroopers, you know. Our clothing choices make us unique individuals with differing and interesting personalities. Therefore, if you cannot tend to these extremely basic needs because of your "mortgage and blah blah blah", maybe you shouldn't have had kids in the first place. They're not puppies, you know. Kids may be dumb, inexperienced, etc., but they still share all feelings and desires like us all. And you know.... why not extend the logic of "I don't want my kids to be less cool than the pop kids" to everyone then? Let's just have a living uniform for all citizens of the country. Poor, rich, whatever... everyone would wear the same clothes. No pop people anymore, huh. Why don't we do that? It's because it encroaches upon our freedom to be ourselves, which we hold very dear to us. KIDS DO THAT TOO.

Stifling your kids' identity "because it's convenient" is absolutely horrific. I'm not asking for you to buy expensive shit. I'm just asking you to allow your kids to have some basic human decency. And fine... You don't wanna do that? Why force your draconian bs on other kids? Just send your kids to school wearing the same clothes. Noone would mind. Why then force other kids with parents that are willing to spend time on them to also live a life like your kid? Why should my kid dress in that ugly ass school uniform every day because you were lazy?

I absolutely don't buy the "poor parents struggling to raise kids" bs as an excuse for shit like this. Me and some of my friends come from lower middle class families. I have seen tremendous differences in our lives as kids despite coming from similar economic backgrounds. The difference was because some parents respected their kids and treated them as independent human beings instead of cattle.

Yeah you’re right I don’t know shit about my own kids. Sure I’ll try that thanks love.

Yeah, all knowing parents like you definitely don't know shit about your kids. Such people are too egoistic too even question their behavior with their kids. They're too egoistic to even consider that they can ever wrong them. The kids of course, find the easiest way to combat this: dishonesty. I've seen so so many of my friends be a part of this phenomenon. But whatever, from your statement, you have implicitly made it very clear that you don't want anyone else talking to you about your relationship with your kids. So whatever...

Listen... I'm not saying you are a bad parent because of the school uniform thing. It is relatively very inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I know I've been very hateful and inappropriate above. I'm sorry for that. You might be much better than the turds that I've seen as parents. What however absolutely maddens me is the approach that parents take with their kids (that you demonstrated as well). This very approach has caused a tremendous amount of pain to myself and people that I love. KIDS ARE NOT CATTLE. THEY ARE HUMANS. This approach of treating them like cattle has led to a sexual abuser working in my former school for over 20 years (he's still working there till date, and would be retiring next year from what I've heard). Why did nothing happen to him? Well, because parents liked the guy cuz he would "discipline" the kids. Of course, any teacher who would discipline the kids would be hated by them, no? Hence, all allegations of sexual abuse against this guy are obviously fake, right? This approach has led to one of my friends attempting suicide (but surviving thankfully). He skipped a grade, so we lost contact. However, from the time that we have interacted after that, he is a completely different person. I think it is because he is heavily medicated or whatever... Again, why did that happen? Cuz his dumass parents thought he was being lazy wherein he had actually burnt out from the studying (he was very smart, which made them push him a lot in academics).

So to recap, the school uniform thing was left behind in the discussion. I was very mad at you for being willing to cut off an entire branch of your kids' identity simply because it was more convenient to do that for you. This is degrading the humanity of kids and making their rights akin to that of cattle. Also, I was pissed at the snarky "Yeah you're right I don't know shit about my kids", as that demonstrated your tremendous ego, something that I've seen to be extremely destructive for kids (which have been me for some time and my friends).