Heidi Stevens: What we take away from our kids — and ourselves — when we turn into the dress police at prom

Inevitably there is a well-intentioned grown-up (or five) looking past the joy and affection and pride, and wringing their hands over the prom dresses.

Your kids look so beautiful. They really do.

You post photos of them going to prom and going to graduation and going to end-of-the-year banquets and all of these milestone events that will forever shape their childhoods and punctuate their memories and inform their futures, and I see their joy and affection and pride and really gorgeous hair and I think: My gosh. I hope they know — truly, in their bones, know — how wonderful they look.

I hope they get through the whole event — the getting ready, the photos, the thing itself — without wishing they looked some other way, some other shape, some other size, some other anything. I hope they have the time of their lives.

I hope they don’t read the Facebook comments.

Because inevitably, invariably, there is a well-intentioned grown-up (or five) looking past the joy and affection and pride and really gorgeous hair and wringing their hands over the dresses. Too short. Too tight. Too revealing. Too much!

And I just find it kind of deflating, honestly. And beside the point. And an unnecessary departure from the stuff that matters: the friendships, the rituals, the young lives unfolding in front of us — unburdened, at least for a few hours, by AP exams and rejection letters and financial aid applications and protests and all the other things that take up so many of their hours and days and months.

I guess I could stop reading the Facebook comments.

But I also know that a few (a bunch?) of those smiling kids hear those comments in person. Maybe from someone they love. Maybe from someone they live with. Likely from someone who means well. And I know that’s a tale as old as time — teenagers pushing wardrobe boundaries, grown-ups pushing back. And I know we get to set our own value systems and expect our kids to adhere to them.

Still, I wonder if these moments can also be an invitation to examine some of what we take away from our kids — and ourselves — when we become the dress police.

“Anytime there’s an opportunity for people to dress up and celebrate — whether it’s prom, whether it’s a graduation, whatever it is — some parents are up in arms about the possibility of what could go wrong with what their daughter chooses to wear,” said parent educator Michelle Icard, author of “Eight Setbacks That Can Make a Child a Success: What to Do and What to Say to Turn ‘Failures’ into Character-Building Moments.”

“I think parents get annoyed sometimes by what their son chooses to wear,” she continued. “Like, ‘No it can’t be another hoodie!’ But not in a way that indicates they think the clothing is a reflection on their child’s character. It’s different with daughters.”

I called Icard because I respect her knowledge and advice as an author and educator, but also because I follow her posts on social media and I admire the flat-out joy and wonder she appears to take in her own adult kids — one of whom just graduated college.

I wanted her take on all of this.

“I think it comes from a place of wanting to protect girls that is well-intentioned and very misguided at the same time,” Icard said.

Here’s why.

“I think parents need to ask themselves, ‘What am I really worried about?’” she said. “Am I worried my daughter’s dress is going to invite harassment or attention she’s not ready for? Because we know changing the outfit isn’t going to change the outcome. We know girls and women get harassed in sweatpants.”

If harassment or unwanted attention is your fear, Icard said, better to prepare your daughter for that overtly.

“I tell parents to say something like, ‘You look amazing. You might draw some attention that you aren’t hoping for, so do you want to talk about how you’ll react if someone makes you uncomfortable?’” Icard said. “We can coach our kids to figure out their own lines.”

Verbal and otherwise.

Often, Icard said, parents will avoid taking a firm stand on what their kids can and can’t wear and will, instead, imply the outfit is a lousy choice. “Don’t you think that’s a little short?” “Are you sure you want to go out in that?”

“The gentle, passive-aggressive needling is just planting seeds of doubt about how they’re choosing to present themselves in the world,” she said. “And it’s also planting seeds of shame—and if not shame, definitely seeds of discontent in your relationship.”

Some of it is driven, indeed, by those inevitable, invariable Facebook comments.

“Sometimes we’re less concerned about protecting our kids and their reputation and safety when we make these needling comments and more worried about what’s going to happen when we post the picture,” Icard said. “We know we’re going to have to deal with, ‘Wow! You let your daughter leave the house in that?’ Or, ‘I hope dad has a gun!’”

And we can gently push back on that.

“You can answer, ‘She’s got a great head on her shoulders,’ or ‘She’s a fabulous kid,’” Icard said.

Anything that points us back in the direction of what matters: The joy. The fun. The rituals. The memories. The next chapters. And the trust we get to place in our kids that they know how to look and dress the part.

We’re mostly there to clap and beam and hold our breath til they come home again, where we get to tell them, one more time, how wonderful they looked.

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