What Would You Do?

Friday night, both K and DD J had friends over for a sleepover. They had a wonderful evening of make your own pizzas, movies with popcorn and countless giggles.

The next morning, J and her friend M were off to a birthday party of a classmate. I told M's mom to just meet us at the party. So Saturday morning, after a yummy breakfast, I told the girls to go up and get dressed etc so that we could get going soon.

I could hear lots of giggles coming from upstairs. When they finally made it down, the girls were pretty much dressed exactly alike. This had me worried a bit since there is a girl in their class who gets bent out of shape over every little thing. I warned them that this might cause upset feelings but they disagreed. Not wanting to make a huge deal about it, I let it go.

S was furious with me. Told me that I shouldn't have said anything and that I had 'burst their bubble' and rained on their parade etc. I told him I still thought this was going to cause an issue. He should know better than to disagree ;-)

The party was a ton of fun. All the girls had their hair and nails done and each girl was weiring a wide hot pink headband with white polka dots. J and M were inseparaple during the party, holding hands and giggling. Everyone seemed to have fun.

Sunday afternoon, I get a call from M's mom. Seems the dress alike girls caused one child (a different one than I was even worried about) a bit of upset. I will call the upset child G. Apparently G was very upset about all of this. The mom told M's mom that this was a form of exclusion by J and M. We have a G.irl S.cout outing next week and the mom requested that J and M not be allowed to come dressed alike.

To be honest, I was a bit floored. Just because 2 little girls are dressed alike they are suddenly excluding their peers? Never once did J or M tell another child that they couldn't do XYZ because they weren't dressed like them. We've really become too much of a feel good society. Now I never would stand for my child being mean or hurtful to another child, but I just don't see how her outfit was doing that. I talked a bit about this with J. I never mentioned G by name, I just told her that some of the girls were upset that her and M dressed alike. I could tell by the look on her face she was a bit confused. When I asked her what was bothering her, she told me, "I just don't get it, they are just clothes". Ah, wisdom out of an 8 year old's mouth.

Since G's mom did not call me directly, I will let it go. But now I am wondering what to do here. J loves to wear that outfit, does that mean I can never let her wear it to school or a school function where her friend might have chosen the same thing by chance?

If the G's mom does call me, I am going to be honest with her. Although I can understand why it might cause G some upset to see her friends dressed alike, I think this is a wonderful teachable moment. Sometimes things upset us yet that was never the intention of anyone. Sometimes we just need to spend sometime upset about it then move along. If we teach our children that Mom and Dad will fix every little issue, I don't see how that benefits anyone. And oh, here's the kicker, G's mom is a family therapist. Things that make me go hmmmmm......