Girls Pajamas and one Confident Kid!
Little Girls Pajamas
It’s not easy raising a very head strong eight year old. If you could just be a fly on our wall sometimes and here the discussions we have.
Today, it was about little girls pajamas. Pajamas. Simple Pajamas.
My daughter, Melanie, is in the 2nd grade. She loves school! They are having a special week with themes planned for each day this week. Today was pajama day. Sounds easy enough. Just find a cute pair of matching pajamas (that are clean) and voila! Pajama day, right?! Nope, not with my child. My child insists on being different! In almost every project, she must be different.
I found about 5 pair of super cute, comfy and clean little girl pajamas for her to wear but she refused each one of them. Absolutely refused. She insisted on wearing a huge, oversized, kitty animal costume called a Kigirumi. Now, mind you, this is not something you ever see a elementary kid wearing to school. I doubt any kid in her school would even know what a Kigirumi is. (It’s a Japanese Anime Character or Animal Costume). Oh, and you can’t see it but it even has a tail on the back too.
As a Mom you always try and protect your child from danger or in this case, ridicule. I thought for sure this child would be laughed at and made fun of all day long. So we began our long discussion over pajamas. I asked her if she was worried about other kids making fun of her and she said absolutely not in the most confident manner. She insisted that she liked this outfit and it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. As a Mom, there are just some battles I choose not to fight and this was one of them. However, I did make her wear a t-shirt and shorts underneath it for two reasons. First, because we live in Texas and the weather can go from cold to hot or hot to cold in an hour but mostly because I thought for sure she would get her poor little feelings hurt.
I dropped her off at school and away she went into the school wearing her Kigirumi.
When school was nearing the end of the day, I headed up to the school and awaited her departure. There she was walking out of the school with her head held high and still wearing the kitty Kigirumi! She was gleaming with happiness! She said she had the best ever! She says that everyone loved her kitty costume almost as much as she did! She told me that teachers took photos of her and many kids even asked where she got it from. I asked her if anyone made fun of her and she said if they did, she didn’t care. She did say that even the 5th graders were impressed and she says those people never get impressed over anything! lol… She loved it and that’s all that mattered!
Here’s another funny twist to this story of mine. I also have a teenage daughter named Megan. She’s seventeen and she’s a senior in high school. She is the exact same way. She doesn’t care what other people think of her. This same themed week at the elementary school was a testing finals for her at the high school. She saw Melanie wearing her Kigirumi to school for pajama day and she decided to be comfortable for finals so she wore her Kigirumi to school too and it wasn’t pajama day at the high school! CRAZY KIDS!
I can remember when I was little not wanting to wear certain clothes or being really worried about how I look. Heck, I can remember making my parents drop me off what seemed to be a mile before the school so that I wouldn’t be seen in the massive van that we used to have.
But I have always tried to raise my kids to do what makes them happy and not worry too much about what others think. I am very glad I have confident kids who test every bit my own confidence at times.
Taking back the American Dream one pair of pajamas (or Kigirumi) at a time.
