Commuter Mom: What Not to Wear

My daughter is a poster child for What Not to Wear. She has decided that you should always wear a skirt to school – even if your mother makes you wear pants underneath it – and like Modern Mom’s son thought, you should try to wear two different shoes whenever possible.

Here are a couple of recent wardrobe highlights:

• Pink and brown striped pants, rainbow socks with one blue and one patent leather mary jane, purple polka dot skirt, red shirt with black polka dots
• Brown pants, pink polka dot skirt, orange shirt (which she tried to wear backwards)
• Jeans, purple polka dot skirt (again), pink glitter shoes, red t-shirt
• Blue shorts, white socks pulled up to her knees, pink glitter shoes, white tank top

Long sleeves in 30 degree weather? Who needs them? She loves to wear tank tops and “short-sleeved pants.” After lots of tears I did finally get smart and put all her warm weather clothes on a shelf where she can’t reach them – now she can wear anything in her bureau.

I’ve decided to embrace her creativity rather than feed my need for her to be coordinated and not care that she looks like she went to the lost and found to get dressed. I just can’t deal with the battle in the morning. But, I do remind her every day before she goes to school, “When everyone tells you how much they like your outfit, make sure you tell them you picked it out all by yourself!”