July is the sales official month and all these beautiful clothes that you’ve been following during days have really tempting prices. You’d like to bring all of them at home with you without giving a second thought, almost buying in bulk, even though you’d finish with your bank account in the red and with your closets full of clothes that, very likely, your kids won’t have time to wear.

So, before becoming crazy consumers, what do you think about trying to buy in a more reasonable way?

Today my intention is that we talk about a couple of interesting facets to keep in mind when buying T-shirts for kids of age six: the fabric and the prints; and I hope that what you read here will help you to hit the nail on the head with your future purchases.

Before leaving your home I would suggest defining the number of T-shirts that your kids need and in what occasions will they use them; for example, if they’re going to use them for going to school or just for staying home. That will help you to know how many of them you’ll have to buy, their rough price and their quality, and also to keep you focused, because our main aim is that you come back home with what you really need.

T H E   F A B R I C

It’s summer, the air is heat and the kids don’t stop playing the whole day so they’re sweating a lot. Fabrics made of natural fibers like cotton, linen, bamboo… are absorbent with what you’ll prevent them from skin irritation due to the sweat. For this reason, when you’re choosing a T-shirt you should read its composition on the label and select the one that has a higher percentage of natural fiber.

On the other hand, pay attention too to its touch, if it’s soft, hard, rough… and to its grammage, in other words, if it’s a thin or a thick fabric. Although these are hot days, I would suggest choosing a fabric with a middle grammage because children’s games of this age group are quite strong. In this way, the fabric will resist better the yanks and rubbings without being pierced; because what we don’t want is to limit their curiosity and their experience with the environment just to prevent that clothing get damaged, right?

P R I N T S

When choosing the garment color and print it’s interesting that it likes to your kids as well as to you, so you should have in mind your kids’ colors preferences and the themes of prints too.

Something that’s quite usual is that the little ones go bananas with the clothing that is printed with their favorite movie characters; if they could they would be dress from head to toe with their clothes. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have this kind of clothing but there’s also life beyond film and TV production companies.

I think it’s interesting you keep in mind your children’s interests to look for T-shirts that symbolize them. For example: at this age there’re lots of kids that love dinosaurs. So, in addition to the Jurassic Park or Jurassic World’s T-shirt they can also have some others with dinosaurs in their natural habitat; or with different dinosaurs printed with their name written below.

In this way, you can guide their interest for a subject to encourage them to keep learning about it; and also to increase their curiosity for reading, as they want to learn their names. “When a child realizes his own capability, he assimilates learning automatically, because it reinforce his innate motivation to learn and, at the same time, increases his personal fulfillment” Arantxa Coca’s quote (Coca 2005, p.91).

This is just an example of how we can take advantage of kids’ interests and use them to make them learning new things; there’s pedagogy in everything.

I know that it’s difficult to find “the perfect clothes” that fulfill with all the requirements, but that don’t make us less responsible to be informed to be able to choose the best garments we can find.

Questioning what’s beyond, about everything in general, and about clothing specifically it’s really interesting and enriching, for both us and your little ones. So you should never stop asking what this garment can do to improve your kids’ development and growth.

Now it’s your turn, please, tell me what your children like and if you’ve done any recent discovery.
You know that I’m all ears!
We’ll meet on the comments below.

All the best,
Laia

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coca Vila, A (2005), El creixement emocional del nen, Viena Edicions, Barcelona

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Credit photos: 01 – Zara | 02 – Alsolete | 03 – 90’s look | 04 – Just by manon | 05 – Soft gallery | 06 – B2B Many | 07 –  Boden USA