My Teen Son Asked ‘Will I Get Bullied For Wearing This To School?’ What I Learned As A Parent
It was 8:17 on a Sunday night, 10 minutes before my 13-year-old Jax was supposed to pack his backpack for Monday, when he appeared in the kitchen doorway twisting the hem of a hoodie. He’d dug it up at the town flea market two weeks prior: a faded vintage piece covered in the big, grinning Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro, and he’d rambled for an hour after buying it about how it was the best find of his life. The microwave dinged with my popcorn behind me, and he shifted his weight, mismatched soccer socks sliding down his calves, before he asked, quiet enough I almost missed it: “Mom… will I get bullied for wearing this to school?”
I’d already pulled my phone out to add milk to the grocery list, and my first instinct was to blurt out the line we all hear: Who cares what other people think? You look great, just wear it. But I stopped. I remembered being 13, with a hand-embroidered “Save the Whales” patch sewn to the back of my Jansport, tucking my backpack under my desk for an entire semester after a boy in my math class called me a tree hugger. That fear doesn’t just disappear because you tell it to.
I sat down on the linoleum next to him, so I wasn’t standing over him looking down (a trick his guidance counselor told me last year that works way better than it has any right to) and asked him what made him ask that. He said last week he drew a Spirited Away character for his art project, and a couple of the guys on the bus said anime was for little kids. He said he didn’t even care that much what they thought, but he didn’t want to spend the whole day waiting for someone to say something stupid. He didn’t want to be the kid people whispered about between classes.
That makes sense, I said. That would suck. I didn’t tell him it was just teasing, or that it wasn’t a big deal. Because when you’re 13, spending an entire school day feeling self-conscious is a very big deal.
Then I asked him what he thought would happen if he wore it. He thought for a minute, picking at a loose thread on the sleeve. “Someone will probably say something dumb,” he said. “I think I’d just call them an idiot and walk away. Right?” I nodded, and asked what the best thing that could happen would be. He grinned, quick, and said Mia from his science lab loves Ghibli too, she might say something. She’s been posting Totoro edits on Instagram all month.
I didn’t tell him he had to wear it to prove he was confident, or that backing out would be cowardly. I just said, “Whatever you decide is fine with me. If you want to throw on a plain gray one today, that’s totally okay. No one gets a prize for being brave every single minute.”
He thought about that for 30 seconds, then slung the hoodie over his shoulder and said he’d wear it. I texted him before first period the next morning just “Text me if you need anything, I’m 10 minutes away” and didn’t bug him all day. When he got in the car after school, I didn’t immediately pounce with questions. He waited until we stopped for gas, then told me what happened. A kid in his first period class snickered and said it was a “little kid cat shirt.” Jax just looked at him and said “Yeah, it is, your crocs are ugly anyway” and turned back to his notes. Then Mia saw it between classes, and they stood by the lockers for 10 minutes talking about the new Ghibli theme park in Japan, and exchanged TikTok usernames.
That’s it, he said. It wasn’t even that big of a deal.
That stuck with me, because I’ve realized how often we get this question wrong as parents and teachers. We either brush off the fear as overreacting, or we rush in to fix it by calling the school or demanding the kid stand their ground no matter what. Both are unhelpful. The concrete stuff I’ve started doing since that night works better than any big speech: first, stop and ask what they’re actually worried about before you give advice. A lot of the time, the fear isn’t about the hoodie—it’s about that one kid who always picks on people, or being the new kid, or already feeling like an outsider. Naming that out loud takes half the power away.
Second, give them permission to choose their own battles. If they want to change clothes, that’s not losing. I skip work events I don’t want to go to, I avoid the coffee shop downtown where the barista is always rude, I pick my battles every single day as an adult. Why do we expect kids to take on every little hassle just to prove they’re authentic?
Third, don’t minimize the small stuff. Most kids aren’t asking about the kind of bullying that ends up in the principal’s office. They’re asking about the casual meanness, the snickers, the offhand comments that ruin your whole day. That fear is valid, even if it doesn’t look like the big, dramatic bullying we see in movies. Saying “that makes sense, that would feel awkward” goes a lot further than “it’s no big deal.”
Last week, Jax wore that Catbus hoodie three days in a row. It’s still got the loose thread on the sleeve he wouldn’t let me cut because he said it adds character. He’s already saving up for a Howl’s Moving Castle hoodie he saw online. I don’t expect this to be the last time he asks me this question. Next time it might be a pride pin, or a weird haircut, or something I don’t even understand the point of. I can’t stop every rude kid from making a stupid comment. I can’t promise him he’ll never feel awkward or left out. But I can meet him where he is, let him call the shots, and not demand he be braver than he feels like being that day. That’s enough, for now.
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