??? Kilt Embarrassing your kids ???

[tulloch]

I got my first kilt when my kids were about 12 & 15. They love how it makes their pa distinctive. The older they get seems the more they like it. Drat. I had hoped to embarrass them.

[t_challa]

Interesting thread. I don't have kids myself, but I have a story that happened to me that is very relevant.

I was wearing my kilt a couple of months ago. It was a Satuday afternoon and I was doing my weekly grocery shop. Did the farmers market thing for my fruit and veg and the supermarket thing for some other bits.

I'm was waiting for the bus to go home (enjoying the mixture of looks you get when kilted up - confusion, admiration, quizzical, flirtatious! ). Anyway, a bloke came up who was also waiting and we ended up getting into conversation. Turns out, he owns about 9 kilts and wears them pretty much full time. However, he wasn't wearing one that day. I asked him why and he replied that it was sports day at his kids school and he didn't want to embarrass them or have them teased by the other kids.

He was a lovely guy, and we could have chatted for hours, but we'd reached my stop. I think it's a shame (but perfectly understandable) that he and other fathers have to change their style for the sake of teasing. Don't get me wrong, when I have kids, I'll probably do the same. It's just a shame.

However, good on the OP for his excellent explanation for defusing the "it's a skirt" comment that I'm sure we've all had at one time or another.

[tpa]

It is a good point and not something I'd thought much about. My kids are grown up and have their own idiosyncrasies, but I frequently collect my grandson from school in my kilt, attend his functions and parties in a kilt, wear it around the house all the time so his friends and their parents also see it (my grandson lives with me). He has never indicated any sort of problem about it, (though he would not wear the one we got for him and now it is too small), but it is certainly something I'll look out for in the future. Possibly, being his grandad, his friends will just write me off as being ancient and or weird or both and leave it at that. They probably would not be far off.

[Just Hugh]

Eh, it depends on the kid. I'm in the U.S. and we have people wearing all kinds of culturally unique outfits. I drove past a basketball court in what I think of as a "Black" neighborhood and there was an Indian boy shooting a basketball in traditional Indian pants and tunic.

There is a boy in the high school that my wife teaches at who wears a kilt to all the "house" competitions - where the various houses of the school perform silly tasks for points.

I see you're from Nottingham, so I'd expect the local culture is different from the U.S., but maybe not too much.

I usually ask my wife and kids if a kilt would be "too much." Mostly, if it's a kilt optional event, my son and I are both wearing a kilt, so I guess if he decided he didn't want to wear a kilt, I'd wonder if I should and I'd honor his wishes.

I mean, it's no big deal to wear pants. Is it?

That said, I remember when my dad drove a van for work and my mother had an alfa romeo convertible and I'd always prefer to get picked up in the alfa, but my parents didn't always comply with that request just to save me some embarrassment.

[Richrail]

I have four adult children, my two younger sons have actually embraced the kilt. My second son now has 3 of the budget kilts from Buyakilt he wears them to classes at University. He also has taken an interest in his heritage. My youngest son just got out of the army and moved home. We got him to wear a kilt for our local Scottish society miniature golf tournament, now he wants a couple kilts for himself. My oldest son thinks I'm crazy and has no interest in learning about our heritage . My daughter and son-in-law think its cool.

[TheOfficialBren]

I have four adult children, my two younger sons have actually embraced the kilt. My second son now has 3 of the budget kilts from Buyakilt he wears them to classes at University. He also has taken an interest in his heritage. My youngest son just got out of the army and moved home. We got him to wear a kilt for our local Scottish society miniature golf tournament, now he wants a couple kilts for himself. My oldest son thinks I'm crazy and has no interest in learning about our heritage . My daughter and son-in-law think its cool.

Ha! It was the opposite in our family, Rich. We're all aware of our Gaelic and Cherokee roots (and the English roots, too) but none if it has been very "celebrated" until recently.

Our parents, being little interested told us to explore for ourselves. My sister and one brother gravitated toward the Cherokee. I gravitated toward the Gael. Our other brother (I'm the youngest) is indifferent.

The music of the Gaelic people has always been of greater interest to my parents than tartan. My faher loved fiddles and, by tacit, bluegrass music (which is essentially Celtic music with the pipes replaced by banjos) so familiar to him from his boyhood in the Highlands (for lack of a better term) of Arkansas. My mother introduced me to piping and Feadóg music at a young age, though she herself does not play.

To riff off of Just Hugh's post regarding cultural dress in America, I once had an Ethnomusicology(study of world music) teacher who was as white as a ghost and wore the dashiki on a somewhat regular basis. He had a passion for the culture and the people, if a little eccentric. As teachers go he was severely underqualified for the PHD which he loudly and often rubbed in our faces (he was threatened by the few of us in his class with longer music resumes than he himself) but I did learn to respect passion for another culture from the man.

I don't understand why someone with no Gaelic (I understand that the kilt is of Highland Scottish origin but outwith Scotland it has a greater Gaelic connection) roots would gravitate toward the kilt but each to their own. I shan't judge them. Many would easily pass judgement upon me with my own more distant roots to Alba and Eire than some here. In my heart and in my soul it is the Gael that speaks most strongly to me.

A North American Gael I am and a North American Gael I shall always be.

[SeumasA]

I came to a knowledge of my Gaelic roots relatively late. My parents were divorced when I was about 9-10, so I wasn't around my dad very much. I do remember going to the Pleasanton games with him as a kid, but I was young enough that I didn't really understand what was going on there. As I got older, I remembered some of the comments he had made when I was a kid and started looking into to our family history to see if I could figure out if the stories I remembered were true.
I still haven't proved or disproved most of them, but I have learned enough to know we do have quite a bit of Scottish ancestry (along with the usual US mix).
When I found that there were Scottish games here locally, I started attending and dragged the family along. My three boys, who were older (late teens to mid-twenties), took to it almost instantly and all wanted kilts. In fact, two of them insisted on wearing their kilts to my father-in-law's funeral. My daughter, on the other hand, really isn't interested in this part of our ancestry.
I guess it just depends on the kid, and their age at the time. I don't know if my boys would have shown the same interest when they were younger.

BTW, TheOfficialBren, I like that last comment of yours: A North American Gael I am and a North American Gael I shall always be.

[OC Richard]

I was very aware of this issue when my kids were in elementary and middle school, and I would pick them up every day.

Middle-school age kids are often mortified by the idea of their friends seeing their parents at all... at one point my daughter informed me that I should park around the corner!

Many's the time I picked up one or both kids while in kilts because I was coming from a piping gig... I waited in the car, my kilt safely out of sight!

At one time or other I did pipe at my kid's schools, in kilts, but that was different (it seems) because my costume was part of an overall performance or show, and few knew that I was a parent. There was no negative reaction by anybody that I can recall.

[Phillip1114]

I wear it sometimes JUST to embarrass her. When she rolls her eyes it makes me want to wear it more. .

[Norbo]

I like your style ;)