Perhaps most important, Fagell noted that adolescent kids are in a unique spot developmentally, one in which they’re particularly hostile toward adults’ assessments of them. “When you are a tween, you do not like adults telling you how you feel, how you should feel, or what you should do, even. [Tweens] like to be treated like the expert in their own life,” she told me. “If a parent says to a 12-year-old, ‘You’re sad,’”—or, for that matter, ‘You’re going to be cold’—“that can make them bristle, because kids that age don’t want to be told how they’re feeling. They’ll tell you how they’re feeling, thank you very much.”

This tendency, combined with severely cold temperatures, can result in a situation that’s frustrating for adults. Parents often worry about safety—or about the looks or questions they might get from teachers or other parents. As Frank, a dad in Philadelphia told me, someone who saw his son out in shorts once threatened to call Child Protective Services. (Frank requested that his last name be omitted to avoid making his son identifiable in what could be a mildly embarrassing story, though he clarified that the phone call was never actually made.) In situations like these, Fagell advises parents to talk to their kids with curiosity instead of authority, and to keep an open mind.

“Start with ‘I’m really curious,’ or ‘I’m wondering,’ or ‘I’ve noticed that you don’t like wearing [long pants] in the winter. Tell me more.’ What you might find is that it’s a sensory issue, that they say, ‘I don’t like the way the fabric feels against my skin,’” she said. “You might actually be able to work with that. You could be able to find something that would keep them warm but work for them a little bit better.”

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Angela Mattke, a pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic Children’s Center in Rochester, Minnesota, also recommends meeting kids in the middle whenever possible, especially if shorts are simply more comfortable for the kid in question. “Sometimes a compromise like wearing sport tights under shorts will work for those children who want to wear shorts all year,” she told me—and added that this is something she sees frequently among kids during the chilly Minnesota winter.

But sometimes, Fagell noted, kids just want to do things their own way, or for their own reasons—and in climates where the cold is milder, perhaps above freezing, Fagell advises parents to just “pick their battles … If they’re not going to [get] frostbite—say, if it’s in the 40s—it’s a dumb decision, but they're unlikely to suffer real harm,” she said.

Perhaps the most important truth about boys who wear shorts all winter, though, is that they do—most of the time—eventually grow out of it.

Tyler Wood, 31, remembers wearing shorts all winter in snowy Boulder, Colorado, as a middle-schooler. He did it partly because he wanted to look like a member of Blink-182 every day of the year, partly because he was convinced his newly sprouting leg hair would keep him warm, and partly because his mother begged him to put on something more sensible. That last one, he added, might have been a key factor: “I think it probably had to do with the age,” he said. “Having a little more personal agency, and a little of that ‘You can’t make me’” attitude.