to be ? that a teacher told my dd (6yrs) to wear cycling shorts under her summer dress if she was going to be doing cartwheels?

[mulranno]

?

Not sure about this one.

My son (age nearly four) loves to take all his clothes off at home and run around naked but he would know not to do it at (pre)school. I try not to make any negative judgments about children's bodies as they are essentially innocent until puberty but, at some point, you do need to have some kind of "privacy" discussion with them. I don't think even his pre school would allow him to run around in just pants.

I assume that a good school would weigh up all the issues (and I can see both sides to this) and come up with a sensible position. If it is an issue, I would e mail the school and ask for the official policy and an explanation behind it.

I am not sure what is really "right". I think it is so culturally driven that there is no right or wrong answer. Girls don't have to do cart wheels, in the same sense as boys don't have to strip. It is not a fundamental right. So, I don't think it ridiculous to ask them to cover up or cease from doing cartwheels. After all, it is not like the boys are showing their underwear and the girls are not allowed to.

But shorts are not fully cotton!!!! You shouldn't encase your privates in tight part-nylon pants over shorts unless you want to have the kind of problems MrsMelons is talking about, ask any GP about how common these kinds of infections are in young girls. Tights with lots of nylon in are equally problematic.

Every shop I go to has them in cotton or stretch cotton. I wear them myself for my own sport, and they're readily available. No lycra required.

I think people are getting hung up on the "bike short" part of the discussion and envisioning little girls in cycling costumes. You can buy basic sports pants in cotton which are like boy leg underwear. They cheap, safe to wear all day, and very comfortable.

It doesn't matter what type of underwear my dd wear or what she wears on top of it, she can't disguise the fact that she is a 7yo girl, and nor should she have to. If someone is sexually attracted to 7yo girls then no amount of layers or shorts is going to stop that.

I am with soupdragon on this one.

I am a bit about the comment from the school tbh.

At 6yo, I wouldn't see an issue with a girl doing cartwheels and 'showing' their knickers. Lots of girls are doing exactly that at my dcs school and none bats an eye lid. mainly because there ins't a lot to see anyway. It doesn't take them that long to do a cartwheel!
Also it increases the sexualisation of children, which, tbh, we should try and avoid rather than insist on.

As to the reasons that MidniteScribbler school is giving...

1. Tong: school policy can instead precise that thing aren't allowed at school
2. Allowing girls to relax more. Well actually, teaching children to behave in an decent manner might be a better way. Girls might need to learn how to sit wo showing knickers and boys might have to learn not to play with their willies during carpet time (and let it stick out).... Incidentally, if you go to other countries, you will see that girls can learn to both sit in a way that doesn't show their knickers and do cartwheels at play time. This isn't mutually exclusive.
3. Menstruation: we are talking about a 6yo here! And, it will be up to the parents of menstruating girls to teach them what they can do to 'hold everything in place so it isn't stopping them to play. This can happen to an 8yo but some girls won't be menstruating until they are 14yo.
4. As for the burning... again, I remember clearly to learn as a child to put my dress/skirt correctly under me before down a slide to avoid exactly that.

Maybe maybe we should learn to relax more and at the same time give children a bit more credit as to their own ability to learn how to behave/make do with the constrains of their environment.

You are spot on too, IThinkOfHappy

And LadyIn..voices of reason. Phew.

While I completely agree with not imposing strict modesty standards on 6 year olds I disagree that these kids are going to melt in British summer weather. I live in California and it was 92 deg (33oC) last week during some odd weather and I survived just fine in one of my summer dresses and a pair of bamboo cycle shorts underneath (which I wear so I don't have to be quite so careful). We don't have air conditioning and it wasn't bad at all. I doubt it gets that hot most days in Britain, especially lately.

YY IThinkOfHappyWhenIThinkOfYou

My dd wears shorts under her dresses, or even leggings. She asks to wear them herself, and I've never forced anything upon her. I think it's because she's worn trousers all her life and rarely wears dresses. She must like the closeness of the shorts/leggings under the dress that gives her the feeling of wearing trousers.

I don't really see the problem with teaching children modesty at an early age. The earlier the better. It's the same as teaching manners.

my nearly 7 yo wears
these she is skinny and they are quite loose around the gusset I could imagine if she was doing a qood carwheel with a wide split, onlookers might get more than they bargained for.She always wears shorts ( the ones like cutdown leggings) though- I never told her to she just puts them on

Everyone saying, oh you can buy cotton shorts easily, yes, of the baggy variety. And I love boy short pants which give good coverage. But cotton only gets stretch in it and fits tightly to the body if you have either lycra or elastine or some such thing, and the majority of people will go out and buy the cheap cycling shorts from the main supermarkets which are not cotton (I spend a lot of money sourcing pure cotton things, they are not easily found everywhere in the right colours, such as red or green). Cheap cycling shorts on top of pants are NOT suitable wear for a lot of girls and will increase infections- go and ask a doctor how to prevent them, they will say wear cotton knickers and a loose cotton skirt or trousers!

I am hung up on nylon, I hate the fact that in the UK, cheap school uniforms are all made with synthetic fabrics which are not healthy and we have very high eczema rates, lots of kids with bits infections and people wonder why they smell aged 8 after running around in school (earlier pre-puberty accounts for some of it, but synthetic shirts, trousers and sweatshirts on 9 year olds don't help).

It's ridiculous. Once again, it's all about the female having to modify her behaviour. The trouble is, if there is a potential child abuser peering at her, he will give not a shit what she is wearing. Even a sumo wrestler fat suit wouldn't put him off.

Selfconfessed its not about melting in our pathetic excuse for a summer, too many layers covering a girl can cause infections, it is very common.

What on earth are 6yo girls knickers like these days??

I have boys and a 3mo dd so I haven't bought girls underwear yet.

I agree Peppermint (and others who have said the same) the potential child abuser is a loose arguement IMO. I don't think we should be plastering naked photos of our DCs online of course!

MrsMelons, I often only wear the shorts, I wear them instead of undies.

Some people were saying about the girls getting hot.

Eskino - they are just much lower cut than they used to be (more like briefs ITSWIM) also I don't find they fit round them so are a bit baggy which may mean they move around. When I was little they were fully round your bum and fitted nicely.

I think this is probably the cheaper ones. Boys cheap pants seem to be the same whether they are expensive or cheap though.

All this "girls should wear what they want and not be exposed to paedos!!" is a bit extreme. I think that most people would find it a bit bizarre if, for instance, girls and/or boys were allowed to wear only underwear throughout the day (although, according to the same argument, it would be quite a sensible dress code on a hot summer day). There are cultures where children have to completely cover up and others where children are normally naked, at least on top. Ours tends to be somewhere in between.

Schools have a uniform code and that includes how the uniform is worn. There are all sorts of reasons for this. It is a bit of a non issue.

That is different, I think the issue is more about wearing lycra shorts over knickers, lycra is not great for some girls (even on its own) nor are the extra layers.

Cotton shorts instead would be a good solution if it really was an issue.

I think part of the problem is that this is a "thin end of the wedge" argument. There are certainly loads of issues about the way society expects and encourages a girl to dress, and rightly there is concern about sexualising them with all that vile playboy bunny shit et al.

But this is about a girl potentially playing at school, doing cartwheeels in her knickers FGS, it's just too much, IMO, to be obsessing about this aspect of female dress. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH IT!

Shouting has made you all agree with me, right?

MrsMelonds I agree with this, I always get my children the bigger style pants that cover everything in cotton, and would have no objection to a boy-style 100% cotton short type pant as a recommended summer item.

It's the layers that are unpleasant, the nylon (most of the children in my children's school do not wear nice cotton shorts (very MN) but hideous football style 100% synthetic shorts for PE, fine for an hour, not fine for all day), it's also the idea that seeing a girl's knickers is so taboo that you ought to try to prevent it, when you can go into WH Smiths or click on the sidebar of shame and see 'glamour models' with pants/swimwear/nothing on as if it was perfectly normal to prance around with just your knickers on. Even little children know you don't go out with just your knickers on!

I really hope all these 'modesty teachers' are teaching their boys to be modest too...

Well, most boys don't wear dresses or do cartwheels! One uniform for all would seem to avoid this issue. Do girls have to wear dresses rather than shorts and a t shirt as summer uniform?