Some parents make the decision to let their kids be who they are. No matter what society says, they let them do and wear that they please.
One dad recently wrote into Reddit asking for some advice.
He wrote into the popular subreddit “Am I The A-hole?” to ask if he was wrong for, “sending my son to school in a dress.”
He explained in the post that his son recently began second grade.
“My son started second grade last week. I get the kids ready for school while my wife sleeps (she’s got a graveyard shift).”
His son is very close with his twin sister.
“He’s got a twin sister. I told them both it was time to get ready for school and his twin sister pulled a bunch of dresses out of her closet. My son picked one up and said ‘I want to wear this.”
Clearly, the dad didn’t think much of it.
“I’m thinking, whatever dude, we’re running late just put some kind of clothes on and let’s get out the door. I’m pretty politically neutral so while I wouldn’t say I was particularly happy he wanted to wear a dress, it also wasn’t nearly as upsetting to me as the idea that I could be late for work if we didn’t get out the door.”
His thought process wasn’t bad, either.
“I figured ok, I wouldn’t ever tell my daughter not to do something because it wasn’t ladylike so I shouldn’t tell my son not to do something because it isn’t manly.”
But, things got bad pretty quickly.
“I drop him off and get to work. Three hours later we get a call to come pick up our son because his outfit is distracting to the other kids and he’s being bullied. He was very sad when my wife got there and the whole morning had been upsetting for him.”
His wife wasn’t happy, either.
“My wife is irate asking how I couldn’t have realized that was inappropriate and I was setting our son up to fail. So is just about everyone else I’ve run this by. My wife thinks damage has been permanently done because he’ll be in the same school system as these kids the rest of his life and he’ll be known as ‘the one who wore a dress’ and I was being thoughtless or willfully ignorant because I was in a rush and our son suffered for it.”
Still, the dad didn’t really think he was in the wrong.
“At the time, I truly didn’t think it was that big a deal, but that doesn’t change that I put my son in harm’s way so now I’m not sure whether I made the wrong decision or not or how to feel about it.”
So, he asked if he was the “a-hole” for allowing his son to wear the dress in the first place.
But, the vast majority of people said he was right…kind of.
One person said he was being a great parent and “open-minded”:
“What a refreshing take on parenthood. It seems today so many people are set on telling women they can be anything but men still have to be men and act traditionally manly. You did what your son asked and I think that makes you a pretty great parent. Good on you OP!”
However, many people said he should have known his son would get bullied.
“OP, did you seriously not know you were signing the young man up for an ass-whooping? Verbal or even physical?
IMO what you did was an expression of your political views that affected your child. You do not sound politically “neutral” by any stretch, as this was an extremely liberal interpretation of gender roles and gender-related social mores. As a result, your kid is crying, and if it was me, I’d feel bad — whatever the politics, no matter how right the parent may be.”
And, then, there were those who said the school made a giant mistake.
“The issue here is with the teachers and admins, not the kid or his parents. How can they possibly think punishing OP’s son for his bullies’ behavior is the correct course of action? Mom and Dad need to go in and explain to the teachers that dressing in a dress is tolerable, but bullying isn’t.”
