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!

😂😂 Ahhh, he sounds sweet!

Have any of the “step up and parent” posters ever parented a non entirely biddable teenage girl? I always assume they are the parents of toddlers or boys only.

My daughter and her friends at their girls school did it for a while. School are wise and did nothing and they stopped soon enough. They were not doing it 'for' any boys though as there weren't any there. It was fashion and peer pressure pure and simple.

I must be odd, because I never once had the urge to roll my skirt at school and I don't remember others doing it either! In school 1977-1991.

Yes!

We followed a student along the high street. Tube skirts seem to ride up as students walk. We could see her underwear and cheeks.

The answer is school trousers- for everyone, the whole school, every school. In a few years it will be completely the norm and never another rolled skirt 🤣
Personally my DD wore short black shorts under her skirt and still rolled it so ne’er a bum cheek did she display thankfully

And herein lies the problem! If more parents parented we wouldn't have the issue. My daughter is the same age. She is body confident and empowered. Smashes it in school and sport. Wears something short in the summer if she feels like it and it feels safe to do so. But strangely she can adapt to wearing trousers at school - because she can also follow the rules. Funny that 🤷. She knows if she got a detention for rolling her skirt she'd face consequences at home too. Phone is a privilege. Money to go to town with friends is a privilege. And it can easily be taken away. We have no social media or unadulterated access to the internet either. Just be the parent!!

Arse cheeks to the wind 😂😂

Yes, but the fashion is for young females to wear sexualised clothing. They weren't doing it consciously, of course.

This ⬆️

@CrystalShoe no one does that is the problem. My mum and I were driving DS home from school and there was a girl who had a skirt just above the knee and my mum (we were stuck at a light) and my mum remarked how unusual it was to see a skirt of that length

@ByGreyWriter conformity simply following the herd - and at some point over the course of my experiences with high school it has gotten shorter. This isn’t just an OP problem it is literally 75% of school girls at moment and I am not I don’t think far out with that

and yes to a PP who asked it is an issue at DDs all girl grammar year 2 of trying to crack down (DD has left) and they gave up with the Year 11s last year to let them focus on the GCSEs

If she's otherwise doing well at school academically, I'd just let her continue to sit the detentions personally. She knows the consequence for rolling up her skirts is detention and she's willing to risk getting them and sit them ... so let her sit them.

I'm sorry, but I'm beyond tired of schools policing girls' bodies and clothing, and it is based on misogyny as it's historically been viewed as a 'distraction to the boys' education'. I'm more interested in the effects of poor behaviour in classrooms then the clothing choices of teenagers.

And FTR, I teach. And have teenage boys and a girl of my own who thankfully have just finished secondary draconian dress code rules (last one). And they all understood the consequences of their own uniform code violations (including short skirts and doc martens at times) and accepted them when they broke them. And they're all doing just fine academically (top uni and sixth forms at the moment) and also in the real world via part time jobs and high level successful sporting interests.

You say she is lovely and kind but I don’t think it is lovely and kind to deflect the teacher’s time and effort from teaching, planning lessons and likely dealing with important pastoral issues. Schools are communities and for communities to function everyone must abide by the rules and sanctions must apply without fear or favour. I think it is concerning that you don’t feel you can influence her to change her behaviour.

I would just leave her and the school to it. You've explained to her the consequences, she accepts them. You don't need to double punish her. At 13 she's old enough to decide for herself whether she wants to get in a battle with the school. It's hardly the crime of the century.

I would take the skirt and make her have trousers for a couple of weeks, then go back to the skirt on the condition that she follows the school rules.
She might think its a silly rule, but she needs to have respect for all rules in life not just the ones she agrees with. And continuously getting detentions is going to build resentment towards teachers which isn't beneficial for her. Moving the blame onto yourself fixes that a bit.

But the clothing is not sexualised and the girls wearing them are not sexualised by clothes. The people are sexualising the girls by discussing their legs and arses as sexual are the ones at fault.

Yes!

Our local high school has just brought in below knee length , pleated and logo skirts due to this problem, more girls are now wearing trousers as the skirts is so bad. Prior to that detentions were given and sanctions like if you had to many negative behaviour points and dentions you were not allowed to take part in year group school trip as part of activities week and in case of Year 11 could not go to prom

I don't think it's useful to compare foreign universities to this situation. Those countries have vastly different standards and culture from ours. I don't think any UK university will be taking out media ads in an attempt to shame short-skirt-wearers!

You don't actually need to have respect for all rules in life. What about unfair or discriminatory rules?

My DD goes to an all girls school. They're not rolling their skirts up for the non existent boys. They're not doing it to sexualise themselves. There's no one on the campus to sexualise them.

Do non of us have mothers who were teens in the 60s? This isn't a new thing. Fashion goes round in circles.

When my DD started at her secondary school the fashion was skinny leg trousers. No one wore school skirts. The school had a rule that the trouser legs had to be wide enough for a pencil placed inside the waist of trousers to fall out of the leg at the bottom. How on earth does the fit of a trouser leg affect children's ability to learn? Still it's an utterly irrelevant rule now because they all wear skirts, rolled twice.

do they not wear tights or shorts/skorts underneath? At our school they all do the skirt rolling but wear those underneath, solves the issue pretty much.

Soon she will be freezing and will start wanting to wear tights or shorts underneath, surely?

So she doesn't want everyone to be obsessed with how much leg (or other) she's showing off? Have you tried exploring with her why she's therefore so obsessed with showing her own legs/other off that she refuses to follow a very clear uniform regulation. Which is it? Either she enjoys the attention that her short skirt attracts or she has no reason not to follow the rules. She's 12. If she won't wear the skirt correctly then you as the parent buy trousers and remove her skirts. She can scream feminism all she wants but from a very young age most girls are fully aware what the implications of wearing provocative clothes are

God Im in my 60’s and we were doing this at my Grammar school all those years ago. My own DD I’m pretty sure did it too. Difference was we had fear of the consequences both at school and at home if caught. So as soon as we got out of school we rolled our skirts up and wiggled around town and on the bus home. Once home skirts reverted to normal length. I imagine she thinks she’s quirky and different. Let her know she’s not. And put in real consequences that will effect change. Removal of phone seems to work Ime

I feel really sad that girls think this is how they should dress. I guess what can we expect when most pop stars are dressed like porn stars.

I totally get your dilemma op. But I’d probably run out of patience for the argument and say she needs to wear trousers if she keeps getting detention.

Are her friends all getting constant detentions too?