My son uses Halloween as an excuse to wear girl clothes to school. I don't know if I can get him to rein it in after this.
I'm a single mom with an 8 year old son who wears girls clothes around the house regularly. he has his own clothes that are his size. It's not clear to me why he does it. It might be because of gender related issues. It might not be. Either way I just let him do it because it seems harmless to me. it's just something that he does around the house he's shown some interest in dressing up outside of the house but I've let him know that I don't think it's a good idea. I've written about his habit before and nothing much has changed since then other than that he's upgraded to nail polish and things of that sort but nothing that big conveniently enough Halloween started to come around and one night I mentioned off hand that if he ever wanted to show up to school dressed up that would be his time to do it because he'd have a reasonable excuse. He said that's what he'd be doing. He wasn't going to go dressed as a girl in a fancy costume (like showing up dressed as Elsa or something) he was just going to show up wearing regular clothes and say he was a girl for Halloween. I kind of regretted mentioning it offhand but I had to admit that it was at least a good enough excuse that might allow him to dip his toes into the water a bit.
Yesterday morning he woke up and put on a dress and a headband. he didn't even seem to be making a big deal out of it. It was just another day. We got into the car and I went to drop him off at a friends house. I bring him there and he hangs out there for a short bit every morning before this friends mom takes them to school. We were getting closer and I was a bit nervous. We showed up and got out of the car and when this friend saw him he thought it was great. Apparently my son had been hyping up his costume beforehand. I dropped him off still feeling a bit nervous about it. It was really on my mind the rest of the day.
In the late afternoon I went to pick him up and he seemed to be perfectly intact. We got into the car and went home. I was desperate to ask him how everything went. He told me everything went fine. I asked him if there was any trouble. He told me (without seeming overly upset) that there was one boy he normally hung out with that was refusing to talk to him that day, that he had a similar situation with another kid after school and that in the afternoon when he was trying to go to the bathroom there was a small group of older kids who refused to let him in to the men's room and he had to go to the other side of the school but other than that he said that everything went fine and everyone treated him o.k.
That evening he said that since he'd done it once maybe he'd do it again some other time. I internally really freaked out when he said it. all things considered yesterday went well enough but there were in just one day 3 unfortunate incidences wherein he wasn't accepted and these were on a day where he at least had a somewhat suitable excuse to dress the way he did. If he does it another day I'd think it'll be worse and I don't consider that many incidences in one day to be encouraging news even though it could've been worse.
Tell me about your growing up Halloween experience and with your permission, I will post. We all have at least one.
I sympathize with this mother. She wants what is best for her child. Fortunately things today are different than when we were kids. As a kid I would have loved to dress as a girl but never had the nerve to ask. Instead I would do Dracula with a cape.
ReplyDeleteIn the late 1990s I did get dressed up and go out to a bar for Halloween. I had a nice blue dress. I word a black wig with black heels and hose along with a beret and I carried a cigar as I did my best Monica Lewinsky. I was warmly accepted by several of the ladies at the bar and had a great time.
Pat