That’s the thing. Kids don’t want to be cold more than anyone else does, but sometimes they try to initiate a power struggle and it’s best not to engage whenever possible. Of course, if your kid decides to do that for the first time in the morning before school when it’s 10 degrees out and they’ll be gone for 7 hours, that’s a different story, but in general, you can refuse to play their game. I never made my daughter take a jacket, and now she usually asks me about the weather forecast. She doesn’t always take my advice about wearing a warm jacket, but at worst she’ll be a bit chilly.
My kid is eight and I can’t imagine her not having the sense to put on a coat if it’s cold outside. But yeah, if she didn’t think to put on her coat before she went out at 23 degrees I’d definitely tell her to get one. It doesn’t take that much effort to utter the words, and you know that for every time they don’t need it, there’s a dozen they do, so just teach them to grab a jacket just in case. It’s just one of the jobs we have as parents, to teach good practices. Maybe they’d figure it out on their own just as well, or they’d be that chick that always forgets to bring a sweater when she should realize it might get cold later.
But some kids will fight you on it because they don’t feel that they need a jacket. Or there are kids like my kid, who WILL. NOT. remember certain things until it’s completely on them to remember. Like I used to always have to remind my daughter to bring her keys when she left in case I wasn’t here when she got home. She would NEVER do it otherwise. Finally I stopped reminding her and it took a few times of her being locked out until she would remember to bring them. That’s just how she is about everything. Drives me nuts. But I can’t be reminding her to bring a jacket and keys when she’s in college, so she needs to get used to it now.
You are. You were actually more vulnerable to heat loss back then thanks to the square-cube law; the smaller the creature the more relative surface area it has to lose heat from (which is why shrews need to eat constantly just to maintain their body heat).
On the other hand you might have felt cold less because you had better bodily heat regulation then, or just because you were losing heat faster (or both). How cold you feel doesn’t necessarily mean that you are actually suffering more from cold; women for example feel colder than men in the same temperature but are more resistant to actual harm from cold. A male body loses heat faster than a female one, and so feels warmer even while it’s losing energy faster. Much the same could have been true of you as a child.
Meh I spent birth through 5 in Germany and then until I was in my 20s in western tier NY state. I can’s say what happened before I was about 3, but I slept with my window open a couple inches summer or winter so I had fresh air. Only time I didn’t was when I was in hospital, but I was born a bit early and had lung damage that I outgrew around 10-12 years old .My doctors never saw any reason to shut my windows, I was bundled up comfortably in bed. [I would get a cold at school, it settles in my chest, turns into bronchitis then rolls into pneumonia. Still does, actually though thanks to the desert rat I married I sleep with the window shut. I am fine with a thin blanket but he has one of the IKEA 365 two part comforters he huddles under.] My main issue is that I am hypersensitive to strep and the common rhinovirus, and you can’t do antibiotics for a rhinovirus. Thanks to being allergic to penicillin I never got overexposed to it.
I think the insistence in wearing a jacket has more to do with parents experiences the whining about the cold as soon as you can no longer turn back to go home (or the knowledge that that will happen), than that children without jackets are befalling dreadful harm.
And carrying a coat, gloves, hat and scarf under your arm (or three of each!) gets old fast.
But the situation in the OP, then yeah, go outside and come in if you are cold. They probably are fine, provided they are watched. Children are often dressed in layers already (t-shirt under warm jumper, maybe tights under jeans, decent shoes) and then running around like mad. Plus if the jacket turns them into a little michelin man it restricts movement, and will be dropped and completely forgotten the moment they hit the monkey bars. (Sleeveless fleece jackets are pretty good for this, keep up core temp and allow for monkey bar movement, combined with hat and gloves.)
Just let him do what he wants. If he finds it too cold, he’ll probably come in and put on a jacket. I don’t think much harm can be done.
As long as the kid can come in and get a jacket, and it’s not a matter of leaving the house and realizing too late that it’s freezing, either make him wear it right off or don’t even try. Make sure that coming in to get the jacket is not ceding that you were right and he was wrong.
I wouldn’t let a kid under, say, 8 or 10 decide whether or not to wear a coat. I grew up in a cold climate where coats and hats and gloves/mittens are a necessity for 4-6 months out of the year, and I remember pretty clearly being a little kid and not really getting it that wearing extra clothes = you stay warm.
I especially remember one instance where I came in after a cross-country ski lesson, and my feet were so cold that they ached badly as they warmed up. My Mom came and looked at what I’d been wearing, and saw that I’d put on thin summer socks to wear outside. She asked why I wore those socks as opposed to thicker ones, and I remember thinking that things like clothes don’t make a difference, if it was cold out, I’d get cold regardless. I was probably around 5 or 6, and clearly didn’t have the mental capacity to realize the direct cause and effect between the clothes I wore and how cold I got.
So yeah, for little kids, adults need to make sure they dress appropriately for the temperature. Kids will come in if they get cold enough, but it might be too late at that point; I remember being awfully cold at times when I was a kid, and that’s with my parents keeping an eye on me. Hypothermia and frostbite happen without much warning.
That’s gotta be tough. I guess both my girls always knew. The coats are kept right by the door so it never seemed like an issue. I almost never get cold myself (lots of insulation) so they’d be more likely to think about it than me. They have their share of forgetfulness though. Homework. Gah. Drives me nuts!
I let my kids decide when to wear a jacket with the understanding that if they don’t take one, they aren’t allowed to complain about being cold. It’s worked well. Sometimes they don’t take one and end up cold, the next time they remember and bring one. Lesson learned, no harm done.