What To Do When Your Kid Asks: ‘Will I Get Bullied For Wearing This?’
It’s 7:12 a.m., the toaster just burned one side of my sourdough, and I’m wiping a coffee spill off my jeans when my 11-year-old daughter Mia steps away from the front door, still holding the neon green dinosaur hoodie she’s been folding and unfolding for 10 minutes. “Will I get bullied for wearing this?” she asks, not meeting my eye.
I remember this exact question, actually. I was her age, standing in my own mom’s hallway, holding a faded Nirvana t-shirt I’d found at a thrift store, terrified the girls in my homeroom would call me a poser. But back then, my mom just said “Don’t be silly, no one will care” and shooed me out the door. I didn’t bring that kind of question to her again. Last month, when Mia came home upset after a classmate called her scuffed white high tops “grandma shoes,” I made the same mistake: I told her the shoes were cute, that the other girl was just being rude, that she shouldn’t care what people think. Mia just nodded, went to her room, and didn’t mention it again.
This time, I don’t rush to fix it. I lean against the coat rack, wipe the last of the coffee off my wrist, and ask her “What do you think would happen if someone said something?” She shrugs, picks at the giant T-Rex printed across the chest that says “Paleontology Girl” in block letters. “They’ll laugh. Everyone will look. I’ll want to go hide in the bathroom the whole day.” I don’t argue that it won’t happen. I just say “That sounds terrible. I’d hate that too. That would make my stomach hurt all day, just thinking about it.” She relaxes a little, just a tiny bit, and nods.
She reminds me it’s spirit week, and today is “Hobby Day,” so everyone’s supposed to wear something that shows what they like. She begged for this hoodie when we went to the natural history museum two weekends ago, and I knew she’d been waiting for a chance to wear it. “If no one was going to say anything at all, would you want to wear it?” I ask. The bus is 7 minutes out, so we don’t have all day, but we have enough. “Yeah,” she says, twisting the cuff between her fingers. “It’s really soft, and the T-Rex is cool.”
Okay, so we make a plan, nothing fancy. I don’t tell her she has to stand up for herself and be brave. I just give her three specific things she can do, depending on what happens. First, if it’s just someone snickering or whispering, she can ignore it and keep walking. Most kids tease to get a reaction, I tell her, and if you don’t give it, they get bored and move on in two minutes. Second, if someone says something out loud to her face, she can just say “It’s my favorite hoodie, I like dinosaurs” and walk away. No yelling, no arguing, just a short, clear answer that doesn’t give them anything else to work with. Third, if someone keeps going after her, or it makes her really uncomfortable, she can go straight to Ms. Lee, her homeroom teacher, who’s always at the lockers before first bell, and text me. I’ll come get her early, no questions asked, no lectures about why she should stay.
Then I dig the plain gray hoodie she wears for PE out of her backpack, and tuck it in the bottom, under her math textbook. “If you get there and hate it after 10 minutes, you can just change. No one has to know. No shame in it.” She smiles a little, pulls the dinosaur hoodie over her head, and ties her shoes.
I spent the rest of the day half thinking about it, wondering if I’d done the right thing. When she got off the bus that afternoon, she was almost running. Three people asked her where she got the hoodie, she said. A girl in her science class said she loved dinosaurs too, and they made plans to look at Mia’s fossil collection after school next week. One boy in math called it “dino dork” under his breath, she said. So she turned around, looked right at him, and said “It’s my favorite, what’s wrong with that?” He just shrugged and turned back to his worksheet. That was it.
This isn’t a story about how my kid was brave and changed the school culture or anything. It’s just a small moment that taught me something I’ve been missing when it comes to this kind of anxiety. Most of the time, when our kids ask if they’ll get bullied for something they want to wear, we default to one of three bad options: we dismiss their fear as silly, we jump in to overprotect and promise to yell at every kid who says something, or we suggest they just change to avoid the hassle. None of those help.
The first option leaves them feeling like they can’t come to us with their fears next time. The second makes every small conflict feel like a big crisis, and robs them of the chance to handle small problems on their own. The third tells them that fitting in is more important than liking what they like.
What worked here was small, concrete stuff that didn’t require a big talk. We started with naming the fear and validating it, not brushing it off. That takes 30 seconds, just saying “That would suck, I get why you’re nervous” instead of “don’t be nervous.” Then we let Mia make the call: she got to decide whether she wanted to wear it, no pressure to be brave if she didn’t feel like it. Then we made a plan that had an out: she didn’t have to tough it out all day if it was awful. That took the pressure off more than anything.
Last week, Mia decided not to wear her rainbow striped socks to a friend’s birthday party, because she was nervous people would tease her. I just packed them in my purse, told her if she changed her mind she could put them on, and that was that. She didn’t end up wearing them, and that was fine. It’s her call, either way.
The dinosaur hoodie is hanging on her door right now, and she said she’s wearing it again tomorrow. Some days they take the risk, some days they don’t. There’s no big win to check off, just one small question answered, one plan made, and the knowledge that whatever they choose, they don’t have to handle it alone.
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