Why Do My Socks Need to Match?

My youngest daughter rarely has on matching socks. In the laundry room, I have a jar of socks. It is filled with solo socks that have no match. When it’s time to put on her shoes, she walks to this jar, grabs two socks, and puts them on, matching or not. One day she said to me, “Why do socks need to match? That seems weird to me.” I giggled to myself realizing the truth in what she said, but more importantly, its bigger meaning.

Why do socks need to match?

They don’t, but somewhere along the line we started wearing matching socks and it became a norm. What if instead, somewhere along that same line those same people started wearing mix-matched socks, then that would be our norm.

We often teach our children based on what was taught to us, but that does not mean it is true. This can be explained by an example using a family, a turkey, and an oven.

There once was a multigenerational family hustling and bustling around the kitchen preparing Thanksgiving dinner. The youngest child watched as her mom chopped off the front and back end of the turkey and placed it in the oven. 

She was a bit confused and asked her mom, “Mom, why do we cut off the front and back end of the turkey? That seems wasteful.” The mom continued working and said, “I have no idea. It’s what we have always done. Go ask grandma!”

So she did, “Grandma, why do we cut off the front and back end of the turkey? That seems wasteful.” The grandma looked up and said, “I have no idea. Go ask great-grandma!”

“Great-grandma, why do we cut off the front and back end of the turkey? That seems wasteful.” Great-grandma smiled and replied, “Back when I was a little girl, our oven was too small to fit the turkey. We needed to cut the front and back end off for it to fit!”

Just because it is how we were raised, does not necessarily mean it is correct.

Just because we are told something, it does not necessarily mean it is right, and just because we believe something is true, does not necessarily mean it is.

It is okay to second guess your beliefs, look at things differently, and change your rules. If we believe and follow everything blindly, we sometimes miss that the oven might just be too small.

For more parenting read my book, The Parenting Backpack.

For more parenting read my book, The Parenting Backpack.