What It Means When Your Kid Asks ‘Should I Wear This Necklace Tomorrow When School Starts’
It’s 8:47 p.m. the night before 7th grade starts, and I’m cross-folding new white crew socks on the living room floor when Lila leans into the doorway. One hand is tucked in the pocket of her new high-waisted leggings, and the other holds out a chunky, lopsided clay necklace, its blue star glaze chipped along one edge. “Should I wear this tomorrow when school starts?” she says.
The Disney Channel theme hums from the TV behind her, our tabby cat is asleep on the pile of new notebooks, and I can see she’s picking at the loose skin around her thumb, a habit she only does when she’s overthinking. My first instinct is to blurt out the answer I give most outfit questions: “It’s cute, wear whatever you want.” But I remember the first day of 6th grade last year, when she changed her shirt three times before we left, then texted me from the bathroom at lunch crying because a girl in her homeroom said her platform sneakers were “too much.” So I pause, fold the last sock, and pat the floor next to me. “Come sit. What do you love about it?”
She made it at art camp in July, when she spent two weeks away from home and didn’t know anyone at first. The girl who slept in the bunk next to her told her the lopsided star was better than any perfect one you could buy, because it was hers. When she got homesick on the third night, she held the star under her pillow until she fell asleep. “Mia’s in a different homeroom this year,” she says, twisting the necklace cord between her fingers. “I don’t know anyone else. What if I need it, but what if it’s stupid?”
I work three days a week as a 6th grade intervention teacher, so I see this exact question play out all the time, just with different objects. A boy will ask if he can wear his dinosaur-themed hoodie on the first day. A girl will hold up a faded keychain from her grandma’s house and ask if it’s okay to hang it on her new backpack. No kid ever comes out and says “I’m scared no one will like the real me, so can I bring a piece of the me that felt safe and happy last summer into this new room?” They wrap it up in a question about clothes or accessories, because that’s the language they know for big, messy feelings.
I don’t give her a big speech about confidence. I just say “Let’s test it. Put it on, walk around the house for five minutes, and see how it feels. Does it pull on your neck when you move? Does it catch on your hoodie string? You’re going to be opening lockers and carrying a heavy math book all day, it’s okay if it’s annoying even if it’s meaningful.” She puts it on, tilts her head from side to side, swings her backpack over her shoulder to test it, and says it doesn’t bug her. Then I say, “Here’s another option. You can wear it, and we’ll tuck that tiny clay frog you made at camp into your front zipper pocket. If at any point today you feel like it’s too much, or you just don’t want to wear it anymore, you can take it off and put it in your backpack, and you have the frog to hold if you still need something. No one has to know.”
She agrees. We tuck the frog in the pocket, I finish the laundry, we go to bed. Next morning, she walks out of her room with the necklace sitting right above the neckline of her gray hoodie, twists the star once before she grabs her lunch box, and out the door we go.
When she gets home that afternoon, she drops her backpack on the floor and pulls out a granola bar. The necklace is still on. Turns out, a girl in her art class asked where she got it, said she takes clay classes too after school, and they made plans to work on mugs together next weekend. It wasn’t a grand fix for first day jitters, just a small thing that worked.
What I’ve learned, both as a mom and a teacher, is that most of the time when kids ask these tiny, seemingly silly questions, they’re not asking for your opinion on fashion. They’re asking for permission to carry their safety with them. A lot of the advice I see says you should just tell them to be themselves, but that doesn’t help when they don’t know how to be themselves in a new room. The concrete thing you can do is simple: first, answer the feeling, not the question. Instead of “it’s pretty,” try “what makes you want to wear it?” That gives them space to say they’re nervous, if they want to. Second, always offer an out. Don’t force them to “be brave” and wear it if they’re unsure, don’t tell them to leave it at home to avoid attention. Let them wear it, and keep a backup in their bag if they change their mind. It takes two seconds, and it takes all the pressure off.
Last week, I had a new student come into my reading group, and she kept twisting a tiny beaded bracelet around her wrist the whole first half of class. I didn’t say “that’s pretty” or “don’t fidget.” I just said, “Did you make that?” She nodded, said she made it with her older cousin over summer break, right before her cousin moved across the country. She said she was nervous to be in reading group because she didn’t know anyone. We just kept reading after that, no big talk. At the end of class, she was still twisting it, but she smiled when she left.
Lila still wears that necklace three or four days a week. Some days she leaves it on her nightstand because she’s worried it will get tangled in her soccer cleats for practice. It’s just a chipped piece of clay on a cotton cord, but it was hers to bring when she needed it. I don’t know what she’ll ask me before the first day of 8th grade next year. Probably something just as small, just as loaded. I’ll pause, I’ll ask what it means, and I’ll tuck a backup in her bag. That’s enough, most days.
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