When Your Tween Asks If They’ll Get Made Fun Of Their Clothes: What I Learned From A Long Skirt
It’s 8 p.m. on a Sunday, laundry’s spilling out of the wicker basket by my bed, and my 12-year-old Lila is cross-legged on my comforter, holding the $3 thrifted linen maxi skirt she’s been obsessing over for a week. She runs a finger over the faded blue wildflower print, doesn’t look up when she asks: “Would I get made fun of for wearing clothes like these? And would the long skirt be impractical for recess and PE?”
I froze for a second. My first instinct was to blurt out the generic lines I’ve heard a hundred times: “Of course no one will tease you! It’s cute, who cares what other people think?” But I remembered last fall, when she cut her own bangs and I said the exact same thing. When a kid called them choppy a few days later, she didn’t tell me until a week later, and just wore a hood pulled low over her forehead the whole time. She didn’t feel safe bringing the problem to me again, because I’d already dismissed her worry before she even asked. So I shut my mouth and leaned in instead.
We tackled the practical question first, since that felt simpler. Lila listed her concerns: she’d trip walking up the stairs between classes, catch the hem on the soccer goal at recess, have to huddle awkwardly to hold it while using the bathroom. I didn’t tell her it would be fine or that it would be a mess. I just said, “Let’s test it.”
She pulled the skirt on, and we walked around the block twice. She practiced sprinting after our tabby that slipped out the gate, climbed our rickety front porch steps three times in a row, sat cross-legged on the sidewalk to pet a neighbor’s dog, and even joked around practicing pulling it up and down outside to test how awkward it would be in a bathroom stall. By the time we got back inside, she’d answered her own question: if she hitched it an inch or two when climbing, it didn’t drag. The side slit let her run easily, and it was no more awkward than any other bottoms. She just wanted help checking, not for me to tell her the answer.
Then we got to the bigger question: teasing. I sat down next to her on the bed and asked what she thought would happen if someone said something. She shrugged and said at least one person would probably call it weird, or say it looks like something her grandma would wear. I didn’t tell her not to care. I just asked, “What do you want to do if that happens?”
She thought for a minute, said she didn’t want to cry or run away, she just wanted to say she likes it. So we role played. I leaned against the headboard, crossed my arms, and did my best 7th grade impression: “Why is your skirt so long? That’s weird.” She giggled, then straightened up and said “Because I like it. Your shoes are ugly anyway,” and we both laughed. She cut the last part for her actual script, said it was unnecessary but felt good to practice.
Monday came, and she wore the skirt. I dropped her off and tried not to overthink it all day. When she got in the car after school, she pulled a crushed fruit snack out of her backpack, opened it, and said “Two people asked where I got it. Jase bumped into me in the hallway and said my skirt was in his way, but that’s just Jase, he’s always bumping into stuff.” No teasing that first day. Wednesday, though, she came home and said one of the girls in her math class asked “Aren’t you boiling in that long thing?” Lila told her “Yeah, a little, but I still like it.” And that was the end of the conversation. No drama, no big fight, just a comment that rolled right off.
I’ve been thinking about this interaction a lot lately, because so many of my mom friends complain that their kids won’t wear anything that isn’t the current trend, or won’t try something they like because they’re scared of teasing. A lot of the time, adults jump to one of two extremes: we tell kids they’re being silly and shouldn’t care what others think, or we agree it’s not worth the hassle and tell them to just pick something else. But what I realized is, when kids ask this question, they’re not asking for a pep talk or for you to fix their fear. They’re doing the normal work of growing up: figuring out who they are, and how to navigate the social spaces they spend every day in. They’re just doing a risk assessment, and they want help working through the two possible problems: will this be uncomfortable physically, and will this be uncomfortable socially.
The small, concrete things that worked for us are things I’ve started telling other parents to try. First, don’t dismiss the worry. Saying “no one will tease you” doesn’t help, because it doesn’t answer the unspoken “what if they do” that’s actually scaring them. Second, test the practical stuff together. Instead of guessing whether a long skirt is impractical for a middle school day, let them wear it around the house and neighborhood for an hour, do all the things they do at school, and let them decide. I thought the skirt would drag and get ruined, but Lila figured out how to adjust it way better than I ever could. Third, let them write their own script for teasing, don’t force one on them. Some kids want a snappy comeback, some just want to ignore it, some want to walk away. Let them pick what feels natural, and practice it once or twice so it doesn’t feel weird if it comes up. Fourth, don’t rush to fix it if someone says something. If they come to you upset, ask “what do you want to do about this?” before you email the teacher or call another parent. More often than not, it’s just a throwaway comment, and they just want to vent, not fix it.
Lila’s worn that long skirt four times in the past three weeks. It’s got a small grass stain on the hem from recess, and she doesn’t care. Yesterday, she pulled a pair of extra-baggy low-rise jeans out of the latest thrift store haul, held them up, and asked me the exact same two questions, just swapped skirt for jeans. We’re going to test them after we finish dinner tonight. Some weeks it’s a long skirt, some weeks it’s baggy jeans, and I don’t know if next month she’ll stop wearing the things she likes to fit in, or if she’ll keep testing out what feels like her. For now, we’re just taking it one outfit, one question, one test run around the block at a time.
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