As your child grows up, the back to school hysteria of buying a new shiny pair of Clarks shoes and picking out a new pencil case is met less with hyperactive excitement, but instead with grunts of indifference. This is, as we all know it, the classic behaviour of the teenager. But you needn’t feel exasperated at the thought of dragging a disgruntled adolescent around the shops to get them set for the new academic year. With our help, shop and save online by following the “Tricky Teenager Back to School Guide”.
Battle with Your Teenagers Over School Trousers
We’re going to leave you to wage the war of too-short skirts and dive right into the gender neutral trouser territory. These days your teenager will try everything to slip through unnoticed in a pair of black skinny jeans. But it’s an absolute no across all school uniform policies and we don’t want our kids looking like scruffs either. Checking in with the school guidelines, why not find a comfortable medium and buy smart black trousers in a slim cut? By purchasing this specific cut of smart trousers, you can guarantee to find them in the correct colour depending on the school’s colours, from black to grey and navy, and narrowly avoid early morning screaming matches for them to turn right back around and go back upstairs to change. Maybe, anyway.
Buy Tailor Fit Shirt to Avoid Fallout
Regardless of whether you’re shopping for a son or a daughter, it’s likely they’ve outgrown the baggy style of primary school pupil shirts. They’ll tell you just don’t understand the hallway politics of making a school uniform significantly more fashionable. But let’s face it, we’re all haunted by our years of compulsory education. Thankfully there are plenty of options for more tailor-fit shirts and these, quite helpfully, still come in multipacks that save you on paying out a lot for one singular search. Even if they’re not narrowly missing their mouths in the dinner hall now they’ve mastered their table manners (just about), it’s still a good idea to avoid that awkward teenager biophase and have enough shirts for everyday of the week.
How to Save on Stylish but Practical School Shoes
Don’t even get us started. Whilst your son likely wants to wear his favourite, decidedly not black trainers everywhere he goes, girls are a whole other story. They want flimsy shoes that definitely aren’t waterproof and are so insubstantial they may as well not be wearing shoes at all. We’d quite like to keep our children’s feet in clunky great leather shoes that support their ankles, do up securely with laces and don’t, under any circumstances, leak. But it’s time to come to terms with the fact you will not win this fight. Why not shop and save money at places with regular sales and voucher codes featured from Debenhams. From Ted Baker to Kickers and Dr Martens. Already with 20% off their range of school shoes, you can expect more sales as August comes to an end and you get one step closer to the bittersweet relief of your home being teenager free in the day.
What School Kit Do You Actually Need?
Syllabuses for subjects have come a long way since we were at school, but we can still remember taking out our shiny new Maths kit and tinkering on our scientific calculator. However, you may find these purchases are expensive and unnecessary. Unfortunately, you’re probably not going to get much out of your teenager other than a shrug that they’ve been told they need it. There’s no denying that protractor and compass will come in handy and that sin, tan and cos is still very much drilled into our heads (not!), but there are cheaper ways to make these purchases. Look into calculators that offer the functions they need without forking out for a scientific calculator with hundreds of different functions. When it comes to a Maths kit, you’ll usually find they come with a fancy tin your child doesn’t need, as well as extras like pencils and rubbers. Weigh up the costs and buy what they need separately to cut costs.
Bargain with Bags
When it comes to finding the perfect school bag, we’re not talking about bargaining the price but using it as a bargain piece with your teenager. If they allow you to buy these other items without kicking off, you’ll allow them to pick out their bag. Within reason, of course. Us parents aren’t made of money. Ultimately if Georgia chooses a shoulder bag that could barely hold her lunch let alone her school books, she can live with the consequences of carrying them around separately in a shopping bag. As for Charles. Give him a budget to work with, because whilst you’ll probably find boys pick a practical backpack or messenger bag, their heads might be turned by more expensive brands to fit in alongside their mates.
Like any relationship between parent and teenager, there is a lot of giving that has to be done before you can take. We don’t make the rules. Trying to cater for their style needs will likely make the whole ordeal a lot easier to cope with, but ultimately you don’t want your children to get in trouble for not meeting a basic uniform requirement. By shopping with retailers like Debenhams, though, you can expect to find a great balance between style and practicality in their school uniform range.
