My husband and I have one son, 34 years old, who has one son himself. It has been many years since my husband and I had to buy school clothes. To help our son and his wife, we decided we would take our grandson school clothes shopping. Now there was an eye opener when it came to the total. Four pairs of pants, eight shirts, underclothes, shoes, and homework supplies came close to $150.00 - all from Wal-mart. We didn't get a backpack or lunch bag as they didn't have anything in the right size or appropriate look. What back packs they had were $15.00, which seemed to me to be way too high priced. We also didn't find any winter clothes yet; we were looking for long sleeved shirts and sweats. I was surprised at this because stores in our area (So. Calif.) used to put winter clothes in the stores in July, even though our summer, and the heat that goes with it, still had at least 3 more months to go. I always thought that was a ridiculous practice, taking out summer clothes in the middle of July and replacing stock with winter clothes. Maybe they have finally decided to stop this practice? So later on there will also be a shopping trip to get winter clothes.
It felt good to be able to help out with these purchases, and spend some good times with our grandson. He was very disappointed about the backpack, he had his heart set on a "cool one" but it was way too big for him and some tears started to well up in the eyes when we said no, but then all was better when went to go get a snack at McD's.
My husband made a comment of how could people with several children afford to buy clothes and supplies considering how much we spent for a few things for just one child, and at a discount store. I think there would have to be a lot of hand-me-downs, and thrift store shopping just to cope with the prices.
We had a good day and our grandson is happy with his new things. Edey
