Can't buy esteem

[garybec]

No: HPFGUIDX 114007

Freud said;
About Molly and Harry - 

Molly bought Harry attractive dress robes because she knows he has 
never had anything nice like that before and will not let them go to 
his head.  And yes, she knows Harry can afford it.  Molly is 
attempting to make up for 11 years of physical and emotional 
neglect.  It doesn't occur to her to make that kind of magnaminous 
gesture for Ron, because she knows he has had her unwavering love 
and attention his entire life.  

I doubt that Molly cared that the dress robe she bought for Ron was 
old fashioned.  Molly is a practical witch and she wants all her 
children to focus beyond their external embellishments.  I also 
think Molly is wise enough to know that Ron cannot buy esteem.  She 
doesn't want her kids to stand out for fancy clothing...she wants 
them to stand out as hard working, down to earth, wizards and 
witches...(as opposite from the Malfoys as you can get!!!)   
 
Molly knows what is best for Ron, even though it causes her some 
anxiety not to be able to spoil him - but she knows he doesn't 
benefit when something comes too easy to him.  Ron always has his 
heart set on something material...candy, brooms, touristy knick-
knacks, other peoples stuff, and on..and on.   I think his mother 
deliberately resists reinforcing his focus on external prizes.   
 
Also, sometimes Ron seems to expect his parents to just buy him 
everything without him having to work for it.  The twins had the 
same clothing issues that Ron does, but they figured out ingenious 
(albeit questionable, heh, heh) ways to get spending money on their 
own.  

 Ron is too young yet to understand that a person who can buy 
anything they want doesn't necessarily benefit from that experience. 
If he did understand this, Draco wouldn't be able to get his dander 
up so easy by calling his family "poor"...

Now Becki;

Sorry Freud, but I have to respectfully disagree with you.  I can't 
believe for a minute that Molly would intentionally dress her 
children 
in "poor" clothes just to make sure that they didn't get a big head 
about it or because she wanted to instill some warped value system.
She bought Harry's dress robes with his own money.  I don't think she
should have bought him second hand stuff when he could afford the 
new ones.  And she didn't pick out some superrich fancy ones,
they were conservative.  He said (paraphrasing here) that they were 
just like his school robes, except they were green. 

I am certain that if Molly had the money, Ron would have gotten new 
dress robes too. By buying the robes that she did, however, 
she made him stand out even more. I think that sometimes, 
Mothers forget what it is like to be a teen. 
I am like a lot of posters and wonder why Molly didn't 
do a bit of alteration to at least make Ron's robes a bit more 
conservative. 
Perhaps she was comparing them to the rest of the crap that
was on the rack at the secondhand shop and figured that they
weren't all that bad.

I also don't think that Ron needs lessons on the difference between 
poor people's attitudes and those of the rich.  Malfoy is a git.  He 
is not a git just because he is rich, (although I think it is a 
contributor), he just think he is better than everyone else.  Harry 
is basiclly rich, he can buy pretty much anything he wants, and he 
doesn't think he is better than anyone else.

I grew up extremely poor.  I, like Ron, wore "poor" clothes. It was 
humiliating.
I always felt like I stuck out.  I just wanted to be "normal", not 
rich.  But 
it was the best we could do at the time.  I understood that, even 
though I 
didn't like it.

Becki (who feels Ron's pain)