Not dressing up - Living Arrows

Not dressing up – Living Arrows

It’s no secret that World Book Day isn’t the biggest of hits in this house.  Although, if you remember we did have a change last year when my son went to school dressed as Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon.  I thought he might actually be happy to dress up as Hiccup again this year.  But when I mentioned it, he told me that, no, he’d done that once and it wasn’t happening again.  In fact he was not dressing up this year.

I know that the majority of children love dressing up and turning up at school wearing some wonderful creation.  I’m happy for them, but for children who aren’t so happy about dressing up and standing out, these events are often not fun.  In fact they can turn out to be traumatic and upsetting and really that isn’t what the day should be about at all.  World Book Day should be about a celebration of books, a wonderful medium that I’ve spent a lifetime enjoying.  I wish that schools would ditch the whole dressing up idea and just ask children to bring in their favourite book to school, and spend time sharing that book with others.

My son’s teacher had said that if he just wanted to bring his book in to share with the class that was fine.  Now to decide on the book.  Although it’s well known that my son is not a fan of independent reading, he does loves books, books that I read to him.  So we looked through his book shelf and I had one of those moments, an idea formed that would kill two birds with one stone.

What about one of your Peter’s Railway books Monkey?  You could take one of the books in and you wouldn’t need to worry about not dressing up, as Peter wears the same clothes as you do.  Bingo!  The idea went down well, and he even asked if he could take one of his trains in too.  He’d originally wanted to take one of his Hornby engines in, but neither his father or I were keen on expensive and fragile trains going into school.  He settled on his wooden Mallard and the smile says it all.

Not dressing up - Living Arrows

Sometimes not dressing up is just the best course of action.  Rather than turning him off the day all together, we found a way that he could still join in, but in his own way, with a book from a series he loves.  I’m often skeptical about some of the costumes and whether they bare any relationship to a book that is really well-loved by that child.  I was more than proud of my son for ‘dressing up’ as Peter and sharing his book with his friends.

What did your children wear on Thursday or did they have a snow day?

Living Arrows

16 thoughts on “Not dressing up – Living Arrows

  1. Ahh! I’m so pleased you found a way to join in. What a fab sounding book.
    My girl didn’t want to dress up this year which I was a little grumpy about as it’s the last year she would have been able too. The secondary school don’t do dressing up. It turns out it didn’t matter anyway. Our school was closed due to the snow.

  2. It’s great that you found a way for him to join in that he was comfortable with. It’s a great idea to celebrate books, I think taking your favourite book in is such a better way to mark the day than a costume.

  3. How lovely that you managed to find a way for your son to be involved. I’m with you on the whole WBD situation, I think it has lost its way with the whole ‘dressing up for the day’ that schools are inclined to do. It should be about sharing your favourite book – teachers, children and parents!

  4. It’s so nice that they don’t force the issue and work with him to find a way for him to enjoy things like this. He looks so happy! x

  5. I’m glad you found a way for him to enjoy World Book Day. Toby isn’t a fan of dressing up either, and at first I tried to think of a book he could basically go in his own clothes, but he chose Mr Nosey. Once he took the nose off though he was just dressed in green so there was nothing really costumey about it. I’m with you though – there are plenty of children who don’t like dressing up, or get upset by others being dressed up (Toby freaked out when he saw his teacher) and the schools don’t really seem to take that into consideration. #LivingArrows

  6. This is a really lovely idea. I always hated dressing up and non school uniform days – I didn’t like anything that made me stand out. I much prefer your suggestion of keeping it to sharing favourite books. The amount of parents scrambling for supermarket costumes!

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