New trainers for the first morning

At the start of every school term in Riyadh, a quiet panic moves through the parents' groups.

Not about grades. About trainers. About which bag, which bottle, which phone the other children will have on the first morning. A mother who was perfectly content in July now feels her son will walk into class looking left behind.

Nobody here is cold or hungry. The worry is real, but its cause was built. Every advert in late summer is designed to make last year's things look tired and this year's things look necessary. It works on children, and it works even better on the parents who love them.

So the family pays to make the feeling go. New trainers, new bag, the newer phone.

And the feeling does not go. By the second month there is a different bag the others have, a different phone, and the small ache returns, a little more expensive to quiet each time.

This is one of the oldest engines of growth there is. Sell people a way out of a social embarrassment and they will keep buying, because the embarrassment renews itself.

I do not think the answer is to sneer at the parents, or to pretend the pressure is imaginary. Children notice what other children have. So do adults.

The useful move may be smaller. Notice the feeling when it arrives. Admit that it is uncomfortable, and that it will come back whatever is bought. Then decide, calmly, what it is worth.