My daughter just turned five, and my wife and I are and will definitely be the gatekeepers of Lily's wardrobe. I believe that (for the most part) children will grow up to be the person they are raised to be. If you raise them to be intelligent, confident, polite, etc., that's what they'll be. To do this means vigilant parenting. I see a lot of children who seem to basically be raising themselves. They are the Future Losers of America.
Question for parents with girls. What is your stance on dress and modesty?
- Thread starter Bamabuzzard
- Start date
Speaking as someone who admittedly is no expert on the subject of raising kids, I believe you have hit the nail on the head. I have my opinion on the subject and I'd like to get Staci's input on it, if she doesn't mind.
I think it comes down to discipline and boundaries. Not discipline as in punishment, but discipline as in understanding yourself and your place.
I believe that children, both consciously and subconsciously, want to know and define their place in the family, their place in school, in the community, and their place in life. The way that they find that place is by establishing their boundaries. They establish those boundaries by testing the limits of what is and is not allowed, and it starts as an infant. When they hit a wall, they mark that wall as a boundary. Once they have established enough boundaries, then they understand (or at least begin to understand) their place, where they belong, and what is expected of them.
When parents refuse to set boundaries for their children, whether it's at all or in regards to certain issues such as dress, the children will continue to test the limits until they reach a wall. When the parents don't set the boundary(ies) eventually someone else will, whether it's a youth minister, a teacher, a principal, or a police officer.
This is, I believe, why it becomes harder and harder to "instill values" in a child the older they get. It's easy to expand boundaries, but it can be extremely difficult to shrink them. And that's also, I believe, why it isn't merely about telling your child that things are either right or wrong. For some that might work but, for most, they aren't going to take you at your word and are going to test those boundaries. If those boundaries aren't there, even though you tell them something is wrong or dangerous, then they are going to continue to do it since that action clearly lies within their "place" in life.
What is most disturbing to me is that by neglecting or refusing to set boundaries for their children, parents are handicapping their children's future and setting them up to fail. Unless the child learns to "grow up" on their own, they are going to be smacked in the face with boundaries that they never knew existed as they get older. Whether it's, as I said, a teacher or a principal or an employer or a police officer at some point they are going to test a boundary with someone that they shouldn't test. And maybe mommy and daddy will be there to bail them out if they're still in high school or college. The sad thing is that while that helps prevent or lessens whatever consequences the child would have faced, it only further reinforces to the child that they don't have boundaries.
As this relates to dress, the all-too-common response is "that's not my fault" when possible consequences of improper dress are suggested. This all goes back to a lack of personal responsibility, which in turn goes back to a lack of boundaries. And it's a complete fallacy. While each person is completely responsible and at fault for their own actions, persons who antagonize those actions are also at fault.
If you stick your hand into a lion cage with a handful of raw hamburger meat you shouldn't be surprised when a lion bites off your hand. You also don't have a right to scream "unfair" and "why me" because a lion bit off your hand.
In the same way, if a girl dresses like a slut and a whore then she shouldn't be surprised when she gets treated like one. And, while the boy is completely at fault for his actions, she doesn't have a right to scream "unfair" and "why me" when a boy takes advantage of her.
GulfCoastTider
Hall of Fame
I have four girls, aged 19 through 7.
Agree completely with CrimsonAudio and SavannahDare (as well as others who have posted similar sentiments). If you constantly stress the virtues of modesty, class and character, they'll make the right life choices all by themselves--including their wardrobe.
That said, every grown woman should have a little black dress in her closet. Like a good essay or Op-Ed, it should be long enough to cover the subject, yet short enough to be interesting.
Men are slaves to our senses and we navigate this world based on physical stimuli. We're also pretty easy to please, though. Any reasonably healthy female looking at a guy and smiling at him has already scored an 8 on the 1-10 scale.
Agree completely with CrimsonAudio and SavannahDare (as well as others who have posted similar sentiments). If you constantly stress the virtues of modesty, class and character, they'll make the right life choices all by themselves--including their wardrobe.
That said, every grown woman should have a little black dress in her closet. Like a good essay or Op-Ed, it should be long enough to cover the subject, yet short enough to be interesting.
Men are slaves to our senses and we navigate this world based on physical stimuli. We're also pretty easy to please, though. Any reasonably healthy female looking at a guy and smiling at him has already scored an 8 on the 1-10 scale.
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One thing that I learned in March at Disney, is that when you see the 40 y.o. man do a double take at the 16 y.o. that walked by, he's not necessarily leering. Several times I caught myself doing a double take and was thinking, "Where in the heck are her parents and are they blind?" I finally realized what the double take would look like to people that saw the dbl take and quit, but dang, I just couldn't believe what those girls wore. My 9y.o. did comment several times that the teenagers weren't dressed appropriately.
Many of their parents say "It's cute". In that meeting I was witnessing this was the response of one of the mothers. The youth leader responded "Ma'am, your daughter wearing shorts that are not only too short but that she has also rolled down so people can see the top lining of her panties and her shirt rolled up and tied revealing her belly is 'cute'?"
BB, I have to ask... Why didn't the youth minister send these girls home? If they showed up wearing this stuff, don't let them go. If they put it on while on a trip, call their parents and tell them to come get them. That's how my old youth minister did things, and he had no problems, even though some of the girls dressed poorly outside of church events.
I saw a girl with her shorts rolled up high enough that her pockets were hanging out the bottom of the shorts. It took me a second t realize what those two, light colored rectangles were dangling below the jean short line.....ohhhhh, those are pockets....never seen that before.
Not BB but I can hazard a guess. The youth minister is afraid to take any drastic steps on his own for fear of retribution from a child's parent(s) for being unfair and overbearing and embarassing their baby girl who did nothing wrong.
From what I gathered much of it was HOW they wore their clothes. Now bear with me because I've been so long and far out of the loop regarding fashion it's pitiful. I'm paraphrasing, but his biggest complaint was that it seemed the girls never wanted to wear their clothes how they were intended to be worn. He gave examples of they couldn't just put a camp T-shirt on an wear it "normal". They had to roll it up, tie here and tie it there and it just so happen that the end result was revealing their stomachs, making it tighter fitting across the chest area etc. Or, they couldn't wear shorts properly. They had to "roll them up" (from the bottom) to make them shorter. Or if they wore shorts that were cut off sweat pants they for some reason felt the need to roll the tops of them down to show several inches below their belly buttons. Things like that. He said he'd make them "unroll", "untie" and "wear right". But he'd gotten tired of dealing with it and felt that the parents needed to be told. But, in the meeting he did disclose that going forward they'd simply be sent home. He's a very patient person. It takes a ton to get this guy upset so the only reason I would say he didn't send them home is because in his mind that was the last thing he wanted to do. I'm not sure though.
edit- He might not of sent them home due to what UA4life mentioned. Things are much different today than when I was that age and in the youth group. I went to school in a day and age where school bus drivers were football, basketball and baseball coaches and didn't mind stopping the bus and "snatchin' a knot in you" if you got too far out of hand. Or youth leaders who'd simply send you home. They didn't care if you'd already paid your money. Dressed like that the only place you're going is back home.
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Buzzard, as a youth leader myself, I believe he has handled this situation properly. Seems he tried to correct the behavior without getting the parents involved, but when that failed, he took a harder approach. The parents reaction both does and doesn't surprise me. Teens can put adult leaders in a bit of a tight spot. I know from a camping trip experience, not only the clothing but general behavior and attitudes head south when some kids get away from mom and dad. Honestly, I think the single biggest problem facing our country is a lack of fathers. I don't mean baby-daddies, I mean men who are a part of the lives of their children, not only present but actively leading the way of their family.
I'd agree. These three "fathers" in this meeting seemed to not be engaged with their children nor seemed to even care. After hearing what this youth leader described about these girls you'd expect their fathers to be right there in the middle of the discussion showing concern or some form of emotion.
I see eveyone is ignoring you, I guess I should do the same. But if you read my post near the beginning of this thread, maybe you can understand why my blood boils at your contributions to this thread, i.e. garbage.
It all does come back to teaching your children a value system of modesty and self-respect as others have said. Parents are the one's buying the appropriate or inappropriate clothing. Even when our daughters starting buying some of their own clothes they knew we had the last word - they always had a choice if as parents we deemed it inappropriate, they could take back or I got out the scissors. Heaven help them if I ever arrived at band practice or a softball practice and they were showing off body parts they had been taught to cover up-they knew I would have called them off the field and made them change and then I would have stayed until the end.
I even had one other rule "as long as they lived under our roof the rules of decency in dress and self respect was in place."
I even had one other rule "as long as they lived under our roof the rules of decency in dress and self respect was in place."
Good for you. Too many parents now days pay no attention to how their daughter dresses and in many cases (whether they realize it or not) encourages it. As these three mothers in this meeting. It was a bit of a coincidence that they were there to discuss the way in which their daughters dressed and yet to see how they were dressed really should have ended any sort of meeting. There's your answer. They see mama do it then they have non-interested dad sitting over there waiting for this meeting to be over so he get back to doing what's important.
There are so many issues at play here, it's hard to touch on them all, but here's my take:
~ The point about mothers living vicariously through their daughters can't be understated. Many adult women still haven't figured out how they feel about themselves, so they want their daughters to be everything they never were (cute, popular, center of attention, noticed by boys, etc). One only needs to eavesdrop on a group of mothers at, say, gymnastics or dance practice, to be horrified by how these women push and mold their daughters to be something other than what the girls naturally are. I got so frustrated by the stupidity of these women I pulled my girls out of gymnastics several years ago because I didn't want my kids contaminated by their peers' weird body issues. Many women take a great deal of pride in their daughters' appearance and popularity and, while that in and of itself is not necessarily a "bad" thing, some take it too far and allow themselves to be too permissive with their daughters. A huge example of this is the number of preteens that are allowed to run around with cell phones and have facebook accounts. The permissive parents have allowed their girls these things, then suddenly there's a tidal wave of girls all wanting the same thing. More permissive parents give in and on and on it goes.
~ Many of these girls (and I'm specifically talking about girls under age 16) do not have a strong father figure in the home to give them their sense of value. A girl gets her sense of "self" from modeling after her mother, but she gets her sense of worth and value from her relationship with her father. Psychologically, I don't think there is a more important relationship in a girl's life than the one she has with her father. If dad isn't in the picture or is emotionally neglectful or abusive, the girl struggles to feel valued (no matter how good the relationship with the mother may be), and she will look to get that sense of value from outside herself...meaning from other males. She does this by doing whatever she can to attract a male's attention (dress, behavior, make-up), all far too soon. My husband coaches girls soccer and softball and you can spot a fatherless daughter a mile away in how she attempts to interact with my husband. He's gotten very good at spotting it too and being sure to exercise extreme caution with those particular girls. It's very sad, actually.
~ The sexualization of our girls at a younger and younger age is something we all need to be vigilant against. First and foremost is to set firm, nonnegotiable limits regarding clothing, make-up, access to social networking sites (and many areas of the internet in general), and knowing who their friends are. We had to stop our older daughter from spending time with one of her little girlfriends a couple of years ago because she was the youngest sibling in a family of five kids and all the older sibs were teenagers who were basically running wild while both parents worked. My daughter's friend was over for supper one night and started talking about her brother's girlfriend being pregnant and "cool" she thought that was (this out of the mouth of a 9 year old). We immediately told her we don't talk about those types of things in our house and that was the last time that child was permitted in my house or invited to any of my daughter's parties/get togethers. We explained to Rowan why we felt it wasn't good for her to hang out with her friend anymore and she totally understood. Apparently, the friend had said things leading up to that about boyfriends and kissing and it made my daughter very uncomfortable, so she was fine with nixing the friendship. Right now, my younger daughter, aged 9 1/2, has a friend of the same age that is a beautiful girl and all the boys are drooling all over her. My daughter is a tomboy and isn't interested in boys like that yet. Her friend likes to come over because every boy in the neighborhood plays in our yard every day of the week, so we've had to start limiting her visits because she's doing it to be around the boys, not to be a friend to our daughter. Again, we discussed this with our daughter and, while she didn't like it, she voiced an understanding of it and even took it upon herself to confront her friend about it. This same friend has a cell phone and dresses in skimpy little shorts. She even called my cell phone the other night at 10pm, trying to get ahold of Tara (who had been in bed asleep for 1 1/2 hours already by then!). We know the parents and the dad is a good guy, but the wife is overpowering and likes her daughter to be a bow-head princess...and the wife is winning. She's one of those mothers that I cannot relate to.
~ I want to be clear that I don't think our girls need to be overly sheltered. I just think that information about sex and relationships should initially and primarily come from us, our girls' parents. I've had several talks with my 11 year old in recent months to revisit "the birds and the bees" talk from a couple of years ago. She now has more age-appropriate details and I've tried to be as open as I can be about sex and relationships. I've recently bought her two awesome books that can answer pretty much any question she could have, and she's been very thankful for that. Of course, she is under strict orders not to share those books with her younger sister because her sister isn't ready for that info yet. I want my girls to get all the info they need, at the age where they need it, from ME first, not some bastardized version of what their friends are talking about in school. I also want them to know that I won't hide anything they need to know from them and that along with sex and relationships comes great responsibility. They won't get that from their friends, but my husband and I love them and want them fully armed with knowledge to protect themselves. So this isn't about keeping them in the dark. It's about making sure they get the info when they need it, in the correct manner, and along with the morality lessons we want them to learn.
I could write seemingly forever on this topic, but these are the highlights. It's a huge issue facing our girls and we owe it to them to discuss it amongst ourselves and with them in as open a manner as possible.
~ The point about mothers living vicariously through their daughters can't be understated. Many adult women still haven't figured out how they feel about themselves, so they want their daughters to be everything they never were (cute, popular, center of attention, noticed by boys, etc). One only needs to eavesdrop on a group of mothers at, say, gymnastics or dance practice, to be horrified by how these women push and mold their daughters to be something other than what the girls naturally are. I got so frustrated by the stupidity of these women I pulled my girls out of gymnastics several years ago because I didn't want my kids contaminated by their peers' weird body issues. Many women take a great deal of pride in their daughters' appearance and popularity and, while that in and of itself is not necessarily a "bad" thing, some take it too far and allow themselves to be too permissive with their daughters. A huge example of this is the number of preteens that are allowed to run around with cell phones and have facebook accounts. The permissive parents have allowed their girls these things, then suddenly there's a tidal wave of girls all wanting the same thing. More permissive parents give in and on and on it goes.
~ Many of these girls (and I'm specifically talking about girls under age 16) do not have a strong father figure in the home to give them their sense of value. A girl gets her sense of "self" from modeling after her mother, but she gets her sense of worth and value from her relationship with her father. Psychologically, I don't think there is a more important relationship in a girl's life than the one she has with her father. If dad isn't in the picture or is emotionally neglectful or abusive, the girl struggles to feel valued (no matter how good the relationship with the mother may be), and she will look to get that sense of value from outside herself...meaning from other males. She does this by doing whatever she can to attract a male's attention (dress, behavior, make-up), all far too soon. My husband coaches girls soccer and softball and you can spot a fatherless daughter a mile away in how she attempts to interact with my husband. He's gotten very good at spotting it too and being sure to exercise extreme caution with those particular girls. It's very sad, actually.
~ The sexualization of our girls at a younger and younger age is something we all need to be vigilant against. First and foremost is to set firm, nonnegotiable limits regarding clothing, make-up, access to social networking sites (and many areas of the internet in general), and knowing who their friends are. We had to stop our older daughter from spending time with one of her little girlfriends a couple of years ago because she was the youngest sibling in a family of five kids and all the older sibs were teenagers who were basically running wild while both parents worked. My daughter's friend was over for supper one night and started talking about her brother's girlfriend being pregnant and "cool" she thought that was (this out of the mouth of a 9 year old). We immediately told her we don't talk about those types of things in our house and that was the last time that child was permitted in my house or invited to any of my daughter's parties/get togethers. We explained to Rowan why we felt it wasn't good for her to hang out with her friend anymore and she totally understood. Apparently, the friend had said things leading up to that about boyfriends and kissing and it made my daughter very uncomfortable, so she was fine with nixing the friendship. Right now, my younger daughter, aged 9 1/2, has a friend of the same age that is a beautiful girl and all the boys are drooling all over her. My daughter is a tomboy and isn't interested in boys like that yet. Her friend likes to come over because every boy in the neighborhood plays in our yard every day of the week, so we've had to start limiting her visits because she's doing it to be around the boys, not to be a friend to our daughter. Again, we discussed this with our daughter and, while she didn't like it, she voiced an understanding of it and even took it upon herself to confront her friend about it. This same friend has a cell phone and dresses in skimpy little shorts. She even called my cell phone the other night at 10pm, trying to get ahold of Tara (who had been in bed asleep for 1 1/2 hours already by then!). We know the parents and the dad is a good guy, but the wife is overpowering and likes her daughter to be a bow-head princess...and the wife is winning. She's one of those mothers that I cannot relate to.
~ I want to be clear that I don't think our girls need to be overly sheltered. I just think that information about sex and relationships should initially and primarily come from us, our girls' parents. I've had several talks with my 11 year old in recent months to revisit "the birds and the bees" talk from a couple of years ago. She now has more age-appropriate details and I've tried to be as open as I can be about sex and relationships. I've recently bought her two awesome books that can answer pretty much any question she could have, and she's been very thankful for that. Of course, she is under strict orders not to share those books with her younger sister because her sister isn't ready for that info yet. I want my girls to get all the info they need, at the age where they need it, from ME first, not some bastardized version of what their friends are talking about in school. I also want them to know that I won't hide anything they need to know from them and that along with sex and relationships comes great responsibility. They won't get that from their friends, but my husband and I love them and want them fully armed with knowledge to protect themselves. So this isn't about keeping them in the dark. It's about making sure they get the info when they need it, in the correct manner, and along with the morality lessons we want them to learn.
I could write seemingly forever on this topic, but these are the highlights. It's a huge issue facing our girls and we owe it to them to discuss it amongst ourselves and with them in as open a manner as possible.
That's the very issue i had with my ex wife. I've been lucky though, my daughter has a great head on her shoulder and rarely listens to her mother's advice in terms of clothing. she knows how i feel about it and is completely respectful of that. i feel for those that have to fight this battle ESPECIALLY when the mothers are living vicariously through their daughters. It's pretty sad and to be honest, i lost quite a bit of respect for my ex over that issue alone.
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