Funky Mom Blouse

Today I was trying to decide what to wear, and I passed over the scorned shirt without really considering it.

I had always liked that blouse, particularly because it went great with jeans and covered up slight, and not so slight, fluctuations in weight.

But one day I was putting it on to take 4-year-old Sara to school, and she asked me, “Why are you wearing that shirt Mama?”

“Don’t you like it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s funky,” she said, confident in her fashion sense.

I had no idea she knew the word funky or what exactly it meant in this context, but I was relieved that her pronunciation was good; that's a tricky word. We’ve been striving for a bilingual upbringing – we do live in Miami after all, and it is a global economy. Better to take advantage of the opportunity to learn another language. But it does lead to bizarre words that I’m not sure are in either language.

I agreed to change, of course; no mom wants to embarrass her preschooler by wearing a funky shirt in front of the whole class and the teacher, and now the poor, previously favored blouse remains in the closet, never getting out to see the world.

Was that overindulgent parenting, I wondered, letting my child’s tastes influence my own clothing style?

Or was I wrong? Was the blouse that I chose on my own indeed out of step with what was usually considered well dressed?

I tried to remember if any adult had ever pointed and laughed while I was wearing the blouse and didn’t come up with any instances, but I couldn’t remember receiving compliments either.

The only sure way to decide will be to pull it back out in say six months to see if it is still funky in Sara’s eyes, or if her phase has passed and I can wear it again in public.