Constant detentions for skirt length

[Falcon1]

My DD is 13. Since starting year 8 she’s had weekly detentions for rolling up her skirt and has been on report. She was also on report twice last year for the same thing. I keep getting emails from the school about it, but really - what can I do? This last detention we’ve said enough is enough and have grounded her but she is entirely unbothered. Her take is that she wants to wear her skirt the way she likes it and will keep doing so, and that the teachers should stop being so obsessed with her legs being on display. I kind of agree to be honest, particularly as she is doing fine academically. But I worry she’s going to be in detention her whole school career and it’s making her hate the school.

any advice most gratefully received!

Personally I would change the uniform and have trousers or one regulation non negotiable long skirt for all. Seen two girls through this stage and it’s so wearing and annoying having an unpleasant interaction every morning over flipping skirt length 🙄🙄

Yes, I think that's a fair point, but it does interest me what clothing parents buy for their daughters.
Also, see my comment about our post 16 students. Non uniform, same issue.

Try the carrot approach.

Tell her she can have some cash to spend on clothes if she goes a month without reoccurrence.

She can spend that money on clothes to express her style outside of school.

Other than that approach, the next stop is punish her more severely (grounding, take away privileges/devices).

The last step, as someone has mentioned, is skirts in the bin and replaced with trousers.

What's the nature of the detentions? Is she missing lessons to sit in an isolation? Is she missing lunchtime? Or are they after school? What is she allowed to do in the detentions? Is she having to do meaningless busy work? Staring out the window? Or can she do her homework?

I am perfectly happy for my DD to break uniform rules if she chooses to, because the punishment is a 30 min after school detention where she would be able to get on with her homework.

If she was going to be missing lessons, her lunchtime or unable to do meaningful work in a detention then I'd feel very differently.

The moralising around girls, their clothes and their bodies is disgusting

my daughter went through this-to the point school were worried about her taking public transport as her skirt was so short. She just said all the other girls did it-why was she getting called out for it. The Head was fantastic and agreed she could wear the school tracksuit trousers as a compromise-appreciate not all schools can do this but she went on to be Head girl at her 6th form and did brilliantly in her A levels. Schools should always give another option to a skirt...

Are you saying Universities would expell someone for wearing a short skirt? I really don't think they would and I wouldn't agree with a school doing it either.

I would say:

DD, you may not agree with the school rule but we can’t change it and I don’t want you to constantly have detention. They have their reasons. Sometimes there are going to be rules you don’t agree with but you have to pick your battles. You’re not going to be able to change the policy this time so do you choose trousers or the properly-worn skirt?

If she carried on wearing the skirt and rolling it up, it would then be a day of not having her phone for first detention. 2 days no phone for second detention etc etc.

@TwoFatDucklings in what way is it "disgusting"? What would acceptable school clothing look like to you?
Also...do you have a son?

Dear god why are some people so stupid as to think it is girls freely choosing to wander around half naked while at the same time boys freely choose to wander around comfortable and fully covered?

How exactly do you think that state of affairs comes about?

Your internalised misogynism is loud and proud today. You’re shaming and sexualising a 13 year old on a public forum. Why is society still responding to girls/womens bodies in this way? This whole argument shifts the focus from clothing to the real issue - how society responds to girls bodies and it teaches girls to feel shame. Why don’t we start teaching adults and boys that girls aren’t sexual objects and that respect id about behaviour and not a hemline?! No wonder women’s rights are eroding right before our eyes when so many women double down on this outdated patriarchal agenda of how girls and women should present in society.

Absolutely agree. I think the fixation on the length of girls skirts in my dds school is pathetic. Girls have been rolling up their skirt a bit in school since the beginning of time. At one point they were lined up every morning for a full skirt inspection by the head. Ridiculous.

“Her take is that she wants to wear her skirt the way she likes it and will keep doing so, and that the teachers should stop being so obsessed with her legs being on display. I kind of agree to be honest”

OP, this message will be coming across loud and clear to her - you need to let her know is that you are TOTALLY behind the school, and that if she gets more detentions, there will be consequences. Schools have uniform policies so that uniform is precisely that - uniform. If your daughter is doing well academically, you don’t want to jeopardise that, so as a PP has suggested, why don’t you reward her for not being in detention - let her have some money to buy what she chooses for out of school, and make it clear that while she can wear whatever sort and length of skirt she likes at home, it’s just not appropriate at school.

I work in a school, though not pupil facing. We have pleated skirts, in an attempt to stop the skirt rolling. Obviously it didn't work. It just means the fabric sticks out at the bottom once rolled.

What makes me sad though is I see a lot of is these teenage girls unconsciously pulling down the back of their skirts/cover their exposed tops-of-thighs. As they are walking. As they are standing chatting with friends. It screams "I am uncomfortable with this length skirt". Whether that is because they feel cold/exposed/unsafe..I do not know.

I don't know the answer to this decade's old issue, but a lot of these girls are following the rebellion at discomfort to themselves.

Oh, and sorry OP, I too think you do need to firm up the boundary on this. Not because of "skirts". But because it is her disrespecting the school rules.

🤣 she’s not rude and arrogant in the slightest. Why do you think that?
Teens will be teens. As previous posters have said people have been rolling skirts for decades.
There are ways and means of getting teenage girls to do things without loosing your relationship with them. Trousers (certainly in my daughters case) would not have been it

when I was at schools there was a girl who ignored the uniform requirements, would come in dressed in all manner of non uniform clothes and was in trouble constantly. Then on the last weeks of school they had an assembly and presented some students with certificates. This girl got one for her “unique take on the meaning of a uniform”. This was given to her be the Head who obviously found it hilarious!

God help her in the real world of work. Honestly OP get a grip here and get her into trousers, she should not be controlling the situation you are her parent so parent her!

Sounds like a pretty good kids who is just pushing boundaries a bit. Has she ever tried to change something at school through school council or similar?

She feels disrespected does she?

Jesus 🙄

She sounds horrifically spoiled. Take her phone away. She gets it back when she’s proved she can follow simple rules. You’re part of the problem - you admit you sort of see her point. You’re dithering about what to do.

Be a parent. Teach her that sometimes we have to
do things we don’t want to do.

Im going to guess that you’re one of those parents who tinkly laughs at how “creative” and “independent” your child is 🙄

Interestingly, I went to a girls school whose policy on skirts was that they had to be below the knee. Not a single one of us rolled our skirts up. It never occurred to us, what purpose would it have had?

I would be interested to know if those who did roll their skirts were in single sex or coed schools.

Maybe they feel disrespected because she won’t follow the rules and doesn’t take them seriously.

Unfortunately OP your attitude is part of the problem. You don’t really understand why it’s a problem as the rule is stupid and you don’t do anything to help your daughter understand the situation by consequences.

Acting like an entitled brat isn’t helping set her up well for the workplace with rules she can’t break.

And this is why she’s doing it.

Her mother does nothing to stop it, otherwise, her child wouldn’t be so wonderful, she’d actually be defiant.

Continue letting her get detentions then.

Take the skirts away and make her wear trousers. What other rules is she going to break?

Deliberately flouting tbe rules as though they don't apply to her is rude and arrogant in itself, dont you see that?

This girl isn't standing out. She's going with the herd. All the girls are wearing these skirts.
I admire the ones who dare to be different with long, wide legged trousers!