I knew it would come one day. You know that day when your daughter is going out with a friend and comes down dressed in something you don’t agree with. Well today that happened but it wasn’t with one of the teenagers!
You see D (9) had been invited round to a friends house for the afternoon. The friend happens to be relatively new around here but he and D have become good friends at school. Anyway D had a new favourite outfit, her black shiny leggings and black cropped hoodie (that shows her belly). I like the outfit, it’s very “dance” and she loves dance. However it’s also the middle of winter so an exposed midriff isn’t, in my view appropriate outside our house.
The conversation didn’t go too well. I politely asked her to put a top under it. “It wont’ look right,” came her reply. Okay hen put something different on. “I don’t want to,” came her second reply. Compromise wasn’t an option. I feared an argument, but it never came.
D came down stairs in a different hoodie altogether. She looked happy and the conversation we had just had seemed to be long forgotten. I thanks her for listening and she went off an had a great couple of hours at his house. While I pondered what had happened.
In hindsight I wonder if I were a little too controlling. I like the girls to express themselves and be their own person and I think I inhibited that in D today. My rationale had been that we don’t know her friends parents very well and sending her there in a top exposing her belly on a chilly winters day made me wonder what they might think. And then it hit me, I had abandoned my “what other people think is there problem” attitude.
I was pretty miffed with myself. That was until after she came home she quickly changed back into the cropped hoodie and casually dropped into conversation “I couldn’t wear it out anyway Daddy, it needs washing”. Basically, if it had been clean she would have warn it no matter what and in fact I hadn’t inhibited her whatsoever. That’s my girl!
Thanks for reading.
