I’m having a tough time grasping this. First of all, I’m a baby boomer, so I understand becoming a hippie, smoking pot, LSD, etc., but anything after about 1970 or so just goes past me. Spiked hair, tattoos, body piercing, mosh pits, self-mutilation - WTF?
Next, this is not a kid you’d, or I should say I’d, expect this from. He’s a big boy, 12 years old, very outgoing and happy most of the time. Very good looking and baby-faced: When he’s asleep and his head is all you see he could pass for six years old. No problems at all in school for the first six years - perfect report card at the end of fifth grade, including behavior - and some problems last year, but nothing too awful. No suspensions, no failing grades. Probably just a mismatch with an extremely rigorous middle school.
So far my strategy has been to co-opt him. I let him buy (with his own money) a pair of pants at Hot Topics and several heavy metal T shirts. I’m taking him and one of his brothers to a Rob Zombie concert. I’m thinking that if my dad had taken me to a Grateful Dead concert when I was 12 that would have put an end to that interest real quick.
I’m hoping that being a goth is something that happens as a matter of degree. Just as not every kid who went to a Dead concert in the 1960s wound up frying his brain with acid probably there are various degrees of being a goth. Right?
On the plus side, being Goth does not necessarily mean being a satanist or performing human sacrifice. It’s just a fashion trend. He’s probably trying to get a rise out of authority figures. Or he just really, really likes the color black (this was why I was goth, or at least, everyone thought I was goth - I really like black, and I also think silver, metal accoutrements go well with black).
I think it’s cool that you’re not totally flipping out over it. I wouldn’t worry about it unless he starts failing school or something like that.
I’m just going to mention something my step-mom said to me once.
“Kids need something to rebel against. Doesn’t matter what it is. Take a look at your brother. He grew his hair past his collar to try to rebel. I didn’t react. So he grew it halfway down his back to rebel. I didn’t react. So he stopped brushing it. I didn’t react. So he stopped washing it. Finally, I reacted, and THAT become the thing we fought over for four years. If I had just **pretended **his shoulder-length hair bugged me in the first place, he wouldn’t have had to throw out basic personal hygeine!”
My 15 year-old son is a wannabe goth, but he is really too sweet to pull it off much. He dyes his hair fuschia and wears black, but as of yet no nail polish or anything like that. He doesn’t smoke, drink, do drugs, or have sex, so I couldn’t care less what color his hair is.
My 13 year-old son is a skater wannabe. He wants me to buy his clothes from Pac-Sun (ha! I shop at Ross!), has about 20 pairs of shoes, and wears his hair in a way that hides his beautiful eyes.
I’m way more worried about the younger one.
Great plan! I suggest you go shopping together and buy yourself some really cool goth duds. Discuss with him whether you should wear eyeliner and black nail polish. Go on and on about how awesome this look is.
He’ll reject it before you even get out of the store.
Aw now, not everyone who listens to weird music and wears Goth-y stuff grows up to be terminally strange. Look at me. When I was fourteen, I got into Alice Cooper. Now that was weird stuff for 1974.
I grew up perfectly normal, right? After all, I’m a mature wife and mother, forty-six years old.
Oh, okay, so I work at a zoo handling snakes and spiders and scorpians all day. Uh, and I mostly wear all black. Still listen to Alice everyday and catch his radio show every night. Currently in a tribute band, where I play Frankenstein, and an executioner and wrangle the snake.
Cheer up. At least he does not (yet) want to be a vandal.
(Huns are way cooler, though.)
As a fashion trend, human sacrifice has a serious down side.
Either Ellen Goodman or Anna Quindlen (I beleive it was Ms. Goodman) had a column on this point in the early years of Goth and punk. She pointed out that while all good ex-hippies could easily tolerate purple spiked hair and most could tolerate piercings, toleration was exactly the wrong reaction. She opined that if we accepted too much, the kids would feel that their rebellion was in vain and that they might have to ratchet up the protest to include bombings or something. She suggested that the next time we encountered a truly odd punk or goth, we gasp a little–even if we had to force it because we really did not mind–just to reduce the possibility of forcing kids into a life of human sacrifice or cannibalism.
And on the pluss side, a recent study (no cite for that, I’m afraid, just something read in a newspaper), states that goths generally tend to to well in school, and turn out to be more well-adjusted and do better later in life then average. So there.
The deal I have with my boys is they can make what ever fashion statements they want (with the exception of tattoos) as long as they keep their grades up and make curfew on time.
So far I’ve been lucky. The most extreme thing my oldest has done is get his hair “frosted” I think they call it. Whatever it is; his head now looks like a checker board. He swears though, this is what the ladies like. Meh, whatever works I guess.
My youngest is autistic. He’s always bugging me to shave his head “so he can be like Dad” I’ve never allowed this because I’m afraid he’ll get it sunburned from playing outside too much.
Anyway, I made a deal with him a couple of months ago. I gave him ten pages out of a book for him to read (Green eggs and Ham). The deal was if he could learn all ten pages by the time he came to see me next weekend; I’d shave his head.
I never thought in a million years he would actually DO this, but he freaking did, much to my amazement. So after picking my jaw up off the floor I took him into the bathroom and shaved his head just like mine.
His Mother wasn’t too pleased at me for that. (So I guess that’s a bonus )
My daughter: at twelve she preferred the loose-fitting boy styles.
By thirteen she started getting into all black, then it slid right into goth. Or rather thirteen year old girl-trying-to-look-goth pertained. A LOT of Hot Topic.
Then we moved on to perky goth for a year or two, and then a perkier, less goth style.
Now at seventeen she’s into the hira–…hera…whatever it is that the fashionable Japanese girls are wearing. She’s into cosplay too. SHe makes a lot of her own clothes, including her dozen pairs of cat ears.
Years ago, when my friends were just starting to grow up and stop wearing trenchcoats and earrings (I’m 40, I find the fact the “goth” is still in so amusing - we didn’t call it goth, but we did the look) we had the conversation “what will our kids need to do to shock us.”
We figured either neck rinks and body scarring ala African tribesmen, or fundamentalist religion.
It saddens me to think we may have been right - and I’ve yet to see a neck ring.
Neck Rinks are notoriously hard to see.
–Tristan, former Gothish type, whose daughter he foresee’s going perky-gothy-hajikiru-cosplayer type in the not to distant future.
Ol’ Alice has a quote, something about how his kids didn’t really stand a chance of shocking him - so his daughter dated a cowboy!
Mine are kind of in the same position. They’ve both got really short hair for one thing. Their dad’s hair is almost to his waist! Same thing with the frontman in my band, who’s about my age. He’s got hair below his shoulders and his fifteen year old son has it really short. He’s very quiet too, unlike his dad. I sometimes think my generation sucked up all the “Cool” and left the kids with nothing to do but imitate us. Sad, eh?
Goth is a fashion trend for most kids. He’ll wear makeup and be depressive (not depressed, usually) and moody, and wear all black and chains.
I say let him, with minor uncomfortableness on your part, even if you have to feign it. I agree with many above posters, if he thinks you’re against the clothes, he won’t feel the need to get into drugs or partying all night which could destroy his grades.
I wonder if there is a girl (or a group of kids) that he wants to be like at school that he perceives as the coolest kids. I went through a minor grunge/90’s hippie phase to be like the cool “art class” kids.
I just wanted to come in and voice my displeasure that so many people now (both kids and adults) are seemingly merging “goth” and “metal dude” together. They are and were very separate things. It seems that most of the kids today don’t seem to notice that.
I wouldn’t say that I was a goth, per se. I was always more of an industrial guy when I was younger. I did the all-black, I dyed my hair various colors (but usually settled on black), I had the combat boots (early enough that I was asked “haven’t you heard the war is over??” by some smartass classmates - 1993 in case you’re interested), etc. I listened to all the usuals - NIN, Depeche Mode, Skinny Puppy, Chemlab, Leæther Strip, Sisters of Mercy, The Cure. I’m 29 now and still listen to much of that from time to time.
I also got decent grades, never drank or did drugs, and got along very well with my parents.
It’s just a fashion trend. He’s probably trying to get a rise out of authority figures. Or he just really, really likes the color black (this was why I was goth, or at least, everyone thought I was goth - I really like black, and I also think silver, metal accoutrements go well with black).
)