How To Start Shirtless: Going All The Way

    Now, at this point, most of you reading this should either have succeded so far and now just need to fill in the cracks to completely minimize the presence of shirts and footwear in your sons’ lives, or are struggling to get your sons to adopt the barefoot and shirtless livestyle and need to get a stronger solution.

    Some of you may still have sons who are resistant to being barefoot and shirtless beyond what is normal for a kid. A situation like this is not good because their avoidance can cause low self esteem and even potentially later cause body issues. To try to get rid of it, one thing to do is to say to your sons that, barring special circumstances, that during the summer they have to be barefoot and shirtless under threat of punishment. You should take most of their clothes, leaving the bare minimum of a few  shorts and put the rest into a locked place so that your boys can’t wear more than shorts without your explicit approval, meaning you have full control over when and where they can wear shirts or shoes. If they continually resist, you may even need to take extreme measures, such as taking all of your sons’ shirts and footwear, then donating them all. Most kids have grown out of their old clothes by the start of the school year anyway, so it to apply this regiment of being barefoot and shirtless. Luckily I never needed to use this on my boys, and my younger son even wanted to donate most of his shirts and shoes. Conveniently, he is growing so quick that we pretty much need to buy him new clothes at the start of each school year, so it works out. This approach isn’t something you should just jump to immediatly however, as it can cause a decent amount of negative tension. One great way to lessen the chance of it though is to avoid seeming like a hypocrite and stay barefoot and shirtless at home as well. This will help show your sons that what you’re doing is in their best interests. If they feel that you don’t need a shirt or shoes, they are more likely to feel they don’t either.

     Another thing that you can do to really push this is to get your sons to take summer jobs that are commonly done barefoot and shirtless. While my older son during the summer works at McDonalds (although in the hottest part of the summer, his boss lets the cashiers work shirtless because the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” rule is completely ignored by pretty much everyone that goes there), my younger son is in training to be a lifeguard and plans to start as soon as he’s old enough. This means that he can continue his lifestyle of staying barefoot and shirtless for sometimes up to two straight weeks at a time during the summer. This is really important, as your boys getting a job like being a lifeguard means that they can often spend their entire day barefoot and shirtless, which will make them increasingly more comfortable.

    My last piece of advice is that during the warmer half of the year, you should outright ban your sons from wearing socks. There are many reasons why you should do this. For one, the socks are pointless. If some kind of footwear is needed, shoes alone can do the job perfectly fine. The socks will only make your sons’ feet hotter, which will make their shoes smell more. Your sons’ feet not being as warm will also make them feel more comfortable, which a big part of the barefoot and shirtless lifestyle. As well, no socks means cutting down on laundry, which is always a good thing. Both of these reasons are good to use as reasons to tell your children when you make it mandatory. But drawing from my knowledge on boys, you will have no problem convincing them to not wear socks anyway.

   With these measures, and anything else you might think is good to do, you will hopefully get the results you want.