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Choosing Clothing

Submitted by an LD OnLine user on

Is there a disability that would affect ability in making proper clothing choices? Our child has a high IQ (130), finished college, and has a decent job. For some reason, no matter how many times I go over clothing choices with him, he cannot seem to get it right. I don’t think he is color blind; it’s more style choices - winter pants with a summer shirt, pin-striped suit pants with a clashing plaid casual shirt, rumpled clothes, pants or shirts with an improper fit, etc. I have paired examples repeatedly. I have purchased men’s clothing magazine to give him examples. I have pointed out good and bad examples while we are out. Nothing is working. He does have underlying speech/language and ADHD issues, and I have always suspected something else, but we have never been able to find a dx. I don’t know if this would be connected to anything else.

Submitted by Mandi on Fri, 07/16/2010 - 5:58 PM

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Your son is an adult.

He has a college degree, he has a good job when half of society right now has no job… But this is just not enough for you.

Yeh i will give you a diagnosis, its called subjective opinion disorder. And get this, he isn’t the one suffering from it. You are.

Different people have different opinions about different things. Just look at how fashion has changed over the ages… There was a time both of us would be improperly dressed as we are not wearing corsets.

If this is all you have to pick at your son about get over it. He is a grown up and let him atleast make and control some aspects of his own life without you poking into it.

Get him a couple nice suits that fit him well. So that if there is a major occasion like a wedding or a funeral he has something to wear. And aside from that, leave the poor guy alone. There are mothers out there who would kill for a son like yours because theirs have real problems and are in jail for all sorts of crimes of a wide variety of natures. But your son is college educated with a good job going to work being an upstanding citizen. Let him breathe a little….

Don’t you have anything else in your life to occupy your time worrying about? Because it seems like you did a good job with him and he has turned out very well, but he is now complete as an adult and now his life is for his own making. Maybe you should get a pet that needs you like your son did when he was little or something…. Or maybe there is a study course of some sort you would like to take yourself? Or a job you would like to do or some kind of craft projects you enjoy? But if this is all you have to pick at with your adult son then kiss the ground and thank jesus and recognize it isn’t the problem you are making of it.

Submitted by wizard4 on Fri, 07/16/2010 - 6:10 PM

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You are a troll. If you have nothing better to do than troll boards looking for people to berate, you need to get a life. I don’t pick at my son. For you to assume, makes an ass of you. HE is just as frustrated by this because others have said things about it. You need to learn to give constructive advice or keep your mouth shut.

Submitted by dhfl143 on Fri, 07/16/2010 - 9:48 PM

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Welcome Wizard4 to LDOnine! I know many persons with and without LDs who have difficulty picking items that match or that are suitable together. I haven’t heard of a specific dx related to personal style or lack thereof. The suggestions that you have implemented sound promising.

Do you think he would be open or willing to have you help coordinate his clothes into compatible sets? You might also want to consider helping him build the foundation of a good collection with basic pieces that can be mix and matched.
[Modified by: dhfl143 on July 16, 2010 05:50 PM]

Submitted by Mandi on Sat, 11/13/2010 - 12:50 PM

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No i am not just a troll actually. I was critical of you for a reason. It is a really hard thing to go through life having people always critisizing you isn’t it? You couldn’t even handle it in one post. But people with LD get just that non stop 24 hours a day 7 days a week from other people who are alledgedly normal. I think it is important for you to understand that often what LD people want isn’t really what they even want. Often they want something just to be free of the same critiscism that you yourself did not enjoy.

There is always a method to my madness. I am glad it made you uncomfortable. Not because i like to be cruel. But because you hopefully have learned something from the experience about what it is like to have LD. To have people critisizing you for stuff that isn’t even that fundimentlaly important. And you failed to note the actual praise i gave your parenting also. You see again people with LD get praised too, but it gets lost in the criticism. I said for example that your son has a good job, he sounds to be a well rounded human being so obviously you raised him well. But all you heard was me critisize. Imagine if your whole life was reading my post. Because that is what it is like to live with LD.

I also made a number of really good suggestions to you too about how to help your son. Including buying a couple of good suits that fit well and picking them out for him, so when he went somewhere important he could wear one and look civilized instead of fringe crazy. But you over looked those as well as you made no mention of any of them. And instead just declared me a troll with nothing relevant to add. I also made a totally legitimate point about fashion and how it changes over time.

And I also can’t help but think my point that you pointed out yourself that he is a good guy working hard at a good job with a college degree etc should be enough to satisfy you.
And it should be.

But if he really is himself upset about his clothing situation, look for stylists on the internet. Just like when he had LD related problems in school you get him private tutoring in the subject. You can do that too with style difficulty. Maybe make a video send it to What Not To Wear on TLC. Or just look on the internet for professional stylists. Sounds like he can afford some lessons in that and tutoring with his good job the result of his college degree. But that is so simple and easy a solution and easy to enact the fact that you and your son both failed to look up such assistance and instead *you* not even him, went to post about it on an LD board kinda shows you aren’t really interested in getting an actual result because deep down inside this isn’t really possibly what he wants. Nor is it what you want. Because then what would be left to pick at? And since you found this board i am certain that if his dressing was really such an issue for you or for him that you could have found a professional stylist with the same ease that you did finding this board.

http://sharmcressey.com/fashionconsulting/personalizedservices.html

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=358165115824&ref+ts

http://www.mylondonstylist.co.uk/styling-for-him/

http://delhi.click.in/classified/services/other-services/personal-shopperswardrobe-fashion-consultant-advisor-516764.html

http://www.mywardrobecompanion.com/men.htm

http://www.myimageconsultant.com.au/image-consultant-men.htm

I am sure too that if you go to youtube and do a search you can likely even find instructive videos for him to watch. So it seems to me given how simple that was to do and how that should be very affordable with you and him especially if he has such a good job and all and it is troubling him that much to get a few tutorials. But the fact that you are the one posting here about it kinda indicates it is more a problem for you. And that you post here instead of looking up this stuff just as easily as you looked up this board kinda shows, you aren’t really looking for a solution. You are just looking for people to tell you it is alright to pick at him because he isn’t “normal.”

Best of luck to you and him. And i am sorry my trolling provided you all these wonderful resources to check out and i will never try to help you again as it is abundantly clear you don’t really want help. You just want others to feel sorry for you because your perfect son has a couple minor issues that aren’t as important to him as they are to you. You want attention and to feel like your complaints about your perfect son are all legitimate.

Again good luck and next time you have a problem maybe google and a little common sense can be of use to you.

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