AIBM to not let ds2 4 wear his Elsa dress out anymore due to twattish sniggering parents

[NellysKnickers]

Ds2s hero is Elsa. He loves her and Frozen. He also loves mud, dinosaurs, trains and his bike. He wore his Elsa dress to pick up ds1 from school today. I'm shocked by the amount of parents giggling and pointing, I expected a bit from kids who dont know any better but adults? ?? I'm torn between being upset and wanting to pinch them in the face ( obviously I would never do this in reality) Why is it that people think it's ok to laugh at someone a little bit different, Dh just says they are a bit thick!

*I'm 100% sure I haven't.

How are you 100% sure? The only way I can think of to be 99.9% sure is to see the child naked.

Whatever! is the only reply I can give to that.

It's a reasonable point. People sometimes mistake my three year-old for a girl, it's quite hard to tell at that age. If he was wearing a dress and you didn't know him then you'd probably just assume he was a girl. It's basically just how they're dressed and their haircut that allows you to differentiate.

It is indeed a reasonable point.

I am just 100% sure I haven't seen it

Yes, people sometimes mistake my two year old for a girl as well, if he was wearing a dress it wouldn't be obvious he was a boy in a frock.

I think some here are underestimating just how cruel some kids can be... Is the OP's 4 year old going to be attending the school his older brother is going to? His brother's classmates may well be the ones doing the teasing if he does start in September.
If any older kids teased a younger Reception age sibling for wearing a princess dress at my kids school, then they would be brought up on it sharpish. That's just not accepted.
I get the impression from posts here there is still a fair amount of bullying at some schools now? Maybe this is the problem... Mind you, kids learn from adults, so if they saw parents laughing at a child (as happened to OP), they would think that is acceptable behaviour.

On occasions my children have made a comment about someone who looks different, as they tend to do when they are little, and I've explained to them why it's not nice or kind to comment on someone's appearance in front of them. It's pretty basic manners.

I've already explained at length upthread (roundly ignored by all who took a different view ) that tolerance of diversity is great for all kids. My children can't help but be 'alternative', just as I couldn't help it in my day. It's great for them if the message, "You are who you are and that is ok; it would be boring if everybody were the same" is reflected in real diversity all around them. If the message children are getting is, "Being Yourself is good, but only if you do it in a way that nobody - however narrow-minded - could ever object to" that's not really much of a step forward for society, is it?

Very well said Devora. That is just how I want my kids to grow up (the first message that is).

Definitely agree that kids pick up a lot of prejudicial attitudes from others/adults. My DS1 (who's in school) finds it completely unremarkable that his friend D has two mums because as far as he's concerned, that's just how her family are and nobody (yet) has suggested to him that there's anything "weird" or "horrible" about it.

As for 'men in dresses at the school gate being stared at' - at our school we have a dad who wears a Muslim thobe I think it is called (the long loose ankle length dress) - does that make some of the posters on here uncomfortable too? Next someone will be saying boys shouldn't do ballet....

Nobody has mentioned either, so I'm guessing on an almost 600 comment thread, nobody has 'a problem' with Muslim men in traditional clothing and boys doing ballet.

Rebelfor, my ballet comment was tongue in cheek - this whole thing was reminding me of Billy Elliot....

However my point about Muslim male dress is this. Many posters on here have said that boys shouldn't wear dresses and that if someone laughs at them it is the mother's fault for letting her son wear a dress. But where does this end?
If we accept this principle (which I don't), then when someone looks/dresses/acts differently for other reasons (religious or cultural for example) life will be that much harder for them because they don't conform to the norm. If dressing differently is seen as weird/attention grabbing/worthy of ridicule, then it will be more difficult for them to fit in and be accepted.

These things do have a knock on effect. I am guessing there are some parts of the country where a man in a thobe would get stared at and remarks made - or worse - which is a shame. Fortunately it doesn't happen round here as we are quite a diverse area.
It would be nice if other areas were as tolerant and I don't accept 'that's just the way it is here' as a valid reason for expecting others to conform.

I'll add a postscript to this thread by telling you that today my dd2 (5) insisted on wearing her 'I love my 2 moms" T shirt out and about. It was a present from American friends to my eldest, who never chose to wear it out of the house (and I left that decision entirely to her).

We were out of the house for a long time: went shopping, went to a cafe, went to a playground. Nobody commented. dd herself pointed it out to a another mum by the slide, telling her, "Actually I have four mums, because I also have my birth mum and my foster mum". "Oh lucky you", said the woman in an underwhelmed voice, before wandering away.

Now, I'm not so daft to think that this would have been so uneventful everywhere. And there are situations where I would not have let her wear it, for her own safety and happiness. But you know, these 'Only on MN' and "Out here in the real world' comments on this thread have irked me. My world is the real world too. And the fact that there are liberal, tolerant communities shouldn't be rubbished as a figment of the Islingtonian imagination, but seen as evidence that this kind of tolerance can spread and will spread. When I first came out, 32 years ago, EVERYWHERE was a grim place to be gay. No longer. Things can change. And we can choose whether or not to help that change happen.

tell them he is reading chapter books already and read the boy in the dress...

when ds chose to wear a dress for dress up day, he looked like a girl. people who knew us did not recognise him... so who knows whether you have seen a boy in a dress or not?