My son Takeh loves his boots.
He likes them because they have a picture of a working car printed on them, but he wants to wear them all the time.
It’s not easy for Ishi, who has to take him to daycare in the morning. Every morning, just as he’s about to leave, he asks, “Where are my boots?” and then he goes through the shoe box looking for his boots, and when he doesn’t find them, he gets all embarrassed. So even on sunny days he has to wear his boots these days.
I thought it might be a peculiar preference limited to my child, but when I looked it up on the Internet, I found that many children around the world love boots. What was it, a “common parenting phenomenon”?
Why do kids love boots? One reason is that they enjoy putting them on themselves.
Well, I think that is a fair generalization. However, the boots we have at home are quite tight for him. Like a woman who has great difficulty putting on slim, long boots, it takes time and arm strength to put on these boots. Barefoot, he cannot put on the boots because of skin friction, so he has to wear socks to make them more slippery before putting them on.
I think I need to buy new boots for him, but he still wears those tight shoes at all costs.
On this particular day, Takeh found a pair of muddy boots that had been washed and hung out to dry, so he put them on and sat down in the living room. He was enchanted by the boots he had put on. Children’s hobbies are truly a mystery.
(2023.05.10)
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