Initiation Writes Back: A Sensitive Girl's Guide to the Revolution
When you're angry as a mother -- and your teenager isn't (yet)
Two weeks ago, I introduced a new advice series here on Substack — taking on questions about writing and education, through the lens of initiation.
In the first letter of the series, a mother and daughter disagree about how best to respond to a new set of rules at school, rules that seem to disproportionately and negatively impact girls. I promised to give my thoughts as a longtime teacher of teens.
It has taken me a while to formulate these thoughts — a pause which I go on to normalize here in my response below. May it be of benefit to you, dear reader, and anyone else who is having Big Feelings about their sensitive kid’s experience in school this year.
Ryan,
Can I get your thoughts on something that’s making me mad right now?
Here’s the deal: the rules for school uniforms at my daughter Millie’s magnet middle school in Florida have changed this year. Skirts and skorts for girls, previously an option, are now off the menu. Instead, the new uniform code called for shorts and pants for all.
The news was disseminated just a few days before school started. It was passed along informally, through the school’s social media channels — which I don’t consistently read – and through parents texting and emailing one another. No reason was given for the change.
We went shopping because, learning this at last minute, we didn’t have any time to order things online. Another thing I hate–shopping. One reason is because Millie will not wear anything that is remotely itchy or stiff. The uniform rules state that shorts can only be two inches above the knee. The only brands that make actual uniform shorts for girls in khaki and navy use material that is super thick and uncomfortable. Millie hates them. So, our only option for warmer weather days in Florida is boys’ shorts, since boys are regularly sold knee-length shorts in nice light moisture-wicking fabrics.
Millie has it way easier than some of her friends who are still really short and have bigger bodies. They wore skirts to accommodate that, and now can’t find well-fitting pants or shorts for their body type. They feel so awkward.
My daughter isn’t acting as bothered as I am because she is a rule-follower and hates to stand out. She would rather just follow the new rules than have me fight it. It’s a principle to me, though.
Who cares if girls have short shorts, or wear skirts?
Why should boys be allowed to wear clothing that feels comfortable and “normal” to them, while girls are being forced to stuff themselves into clothing they wouldn’t choose otherwise? Is this really affecting the education process?
What are your thoughts from an educator standpoint? Am I just a whiny parent? Am I totally crazy? I’d love a new way to look at it.
— Aubrey
Aubrey,
You are not crazy.
The sound that you hear in your head – that gnashing, grinding sound, when you attempt to formulate a logical thought on this issue – lives in my head too. It arises whenever systems of power say that X is necessary for good things to happen, when in fact X is making it harder for the good things to happen. That makes us feel crazy.
If we believe this about ourselves, and stay silent about it, that is all too often where this story ends.
When we do compare notes, as you have with me here, and we do realize we’re being shown the B.S. behind the curtain — then we know we’re in the throes of a bona fide initiation.
When educators like me talk about what a good education looks like in 2023, we talk about what it means to be “trauma-informed,” because so many of us carry trauma from our pandemic experiences, and so do our students.
Trauma-informed ed may sound like common sense to you. It means, at a minimum, providing a space where people feel physically safe, emotionally connected, and able to exercise voice and choice. These ingredients are to student learning what air, water and sun are to plants.
However, even well-meaning people can accidentally kill their plants. And it is surprisingly common for well-meaning schools to do the same to their learning culture.
For example, many schools attempt to create “equity” by making the rules “the same” for everyone, but in ways that do not impact children equally — making some physically uncomfortable, emotionally disconnected, and deprived of a say in the way things are. Some also deprive kids’ grownups of agency in the process, by communicating in ways that are “the same for everyone” but harder for some to follow than others — i.e. parents who work one or more jobs, who don’t speak English, or who aren’t linked into the local Mom Hive Mind because they are elderly grandparents caring for a grandchild, two queer dads, or simply new to the area. This is like pouring the same potting mix into containers for both drainage-loving cactuses and moisture-loving ferns, and hoping you’ll get the same results.
That said, it is also depressingly common for schools to know that this is happening to some students and families, and to conclude that the subjugation of the many is worth the education of the few. So common that proponents of critical pedagogy have dubbed this “the hidden curriculum.” It is a set of unconscious and conscious behaviors that conveys to marginalized people – girls, children of color, immigrants, kids with disabilities – that their education is secondary in importance to that of their male, white, English-speaking, able-bodied or neurotypical peers.
That gnashing, grinding sound in your head, as you dutifully tried to figure out a way to squeeze your square-shaped daughter into the round holes your school has created for “everyone” — that was the sound of the “hidden curriculum!” alarm going off in your head. That sound lives in my head too, and in the heads of many of the people I spoke to on background as I wrote this. (“GAHHH!” was their general vibe, followed by “Please don’t quote me directly on that.”)
This alarm has likely been ringing all your life, if you were educated under the same circumstances. It is alerting you to some B.S. behind this school’s curtain. It is not “crazy” to wonder if now, when you hold about as much power as you ever will as a woman living under patriarchy, might be the time to do something about it.
“As a parent, there is a process of mourning that comes for many with realizing that our children, despite our best efforts, will be socialized into this patriarchal culture. We have to accept that we are all products of this world, while also holding space to resist that world, and that’s some of the hardest, and most valuable, work of parenting, to my mind.”
—
, in an interview with ofBefore we dive into the action steps you might take here, I want to be clear about two things.
First, your daughter is not doomed if she stays at this school and the school doesn’t change. Your role here is more significant. Many of the most anti-racist and feminist educators I know were educated in uniform-touting Catholic schools here in NYC. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, city parents considered them safer alternatives to the public schools, which had been gutted by white flight. To a person, these friends all have gleeful stories about how they wore their standard-issue outfits with slashed fishnets and combat boots underneath, to prove that no nun alive was going to suppress their burgeoning teen style. Being suspended for the boots did not stop them from later enrolling in Ivy League schools, either. That said, it is no coincidence that these friends also had parents at home who provided them with rich experiences of belonging outside of school, i.e. within the family, the Black church, and/or long glorious summers spent in their countries of origin. Their parents, in short, saw clearly the poor soil of the hidden curriculum, and they threw good compost on it to compensate. This is one tried-and-true way to amend the situation at your daughter’s school, without needing anyone else’s permission but your own.
Secondly, not all uniform policies, or policy changes, are manifestations of the hidden curriculum in action. A friend who works as a literacy specialist in an economically diverse charter school told me that her school simply designates colors for pants and shirts that correspond to grades as their “uniform.” This makes it easier, she explained, to quietly swap out one child’s tattered t-shirt for a new one from the storeroom, preserving their dignity and de-emphasizing the differences in income among families. Other schools may remove some items from their uniform lists from year to year, including skirts, to create safer environments for queer youth. Using school policy to blunt the impacts of our country’s disgraceful levels of income inequality and transphobia can be skillful gardening.
However, the details of your letter do not suggest that this school is actively carving out space for queerness, or aiming to better serve kids living in poverty. If it had, we would never know it from the rollout of this new rule, because you state that no explanation was given, in ways that would make it clear that the system of power is working for you, and not the other way around. And with all due respect for thoughtful Floridians like you, the people driving educational policy in Florida have not earned the benefit of the doubt.
Furthermore, even if we had more information on this school’s intent, the new rules are having a disproportionate and negative impact that, as you say, violates your personal principles on the matter. Principles that have to do with wanting equity in action, and not just on the school’s brochure.
As you note:
Why should boys be allowed to wear clothing that feels comfortable and “normal” to them, while girls are being forced to stuff themselves into clothing they wouldn’t choose otherwise? Is this really affecting the education process?
All children should feel relatively comfortable and affirmed in their bodies and identities at school, full stop. Otherwise, that discomfort will impede the educational process. That is the gist of the last several decades of educational research. It is incumbent upon us as adults to create those conditions for children. That is the radical position I hold. It seems you hold it too.
Feeling forced to be complicit in the creation of your daughter’s discomfort, when I imagine you want her to feel affirmed and valued and uplifted by her education instead, made you anger because that is how we feel when our values are violated.
The fact that you are angry about this makes you a good, not-crazy mother. The fact that your protective anger extends to your daughter’s friends makes you a better one.
That anger you feel inside is the call to initiation.
In your story, there are really two initiations. Your daughter’s, and your own.
Millie’s considering pretending she never heard the call to adventure, never saw the evidence that something is wrong — a common first move for young heroes.
You, however, are being called to Protect the Innocent — a common initiation story for reluctant-but-skillful Wise Adviser types. This is the entire driving force behind The Mandalorian, for example, in which someone who has perfected the art of gruffly going along to get along in a broken system can’t help but act protectively, because, well, have you seen Baby Yoda?
That your daughter believes that your protection here is unnecessary does not make it true. Baby Yoda very clearly needs Din Djarin. Teenagers, similarly, still need grownups to guide them. They are not operating at the height of their powers, like we are, and they don’t know what we know about the challenges they face.
To teach your daughter how to effectively fight for herself, however, you have to find a way to help her do it as herself.
“The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility.”
– bell hooks
Ahead of you and Millie both are the choices that most initiates face in these situations:
You can go along with the system of power.
You can resist behind closed doors.
You can leave.
You can resist openly.
Despite what our hot-take culture may tell you, your options here are also not limited to “pick a choice right away” or “don’t respond at all.”
Why wait?
Sometimes, when teaching teens, I’m the one that needs to cool off. I may need to gather more context or do more research, as I have here. I may be more triggered by what is happening to them than they are.
Sometimes, a teen needs a moment to cool off too. They may be responding inappropriately in ways that are driven by cognitive and hormonal changes that are happening to their bodies. Or, they may need time to overcome their fears about what may happen if they respond.
Some teens may hold the mistaken belief that protesting injustice is the same as “being bossy” or “causing drama,” and that they are avoiding both experiencing harm and causing harm by not acting to defend themselves. They need time to understand that inaction, too, will harm them in the long run, and that in the words of Desmond Tutu, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
All teens also have a developmental need to individuate from the adults around them, even and especially the ones they respect most. Given what you’ve shared, I suspect you may not be a person who fears taking action, even if it makes you seem like a “whiny parent.” You may just want to know that people like me and the others who read here – parents and educators who battle the hidden curriculum and sneak kids clean t-shirts on the daily – are in your corner. (And we are, I’ve checked!) But your daughter knows she is not you, and it is her job as a teen to separate her “brand” from yours (a framing I’m borrowing here from the psychologist Lisa Damour). Insisting on following the rules, when you’re feeling ready to burn it all down, may be Millie’s chosen means of rebelling against you in this moment. As is her right.
Taking time to build consensus and coalition across multiple perspectives, understanding the history of the issue and the solutions that have already been tried, and crafting a response that includes all voices — this is another way that you begin to amend the poor soil of the hidden curriculum, which tells you there isn’t ever time for any of that.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help her to slowly to see — not just in this moment, but over the course of the rest of her life — that even sensitive girls like her have a role to play in the revolution.
In my own work with teens, in these situations, I lean often on a conversation strategy I call “framing the choices.”
This provides the benefit of conveying your experience to a teen who may need it – in this case, your own not-crazy take on battling the kyriarchy – while leaving the teen in question with a feeling of agency.
When framing the choices above, when it comes to dealing with any school situations that seem unfair to one party or another, you might say something like this:
“You have four choices in my mind. Here is what you might do.
You, Millie, can do nothing.
Pro: You avoid the momentary discomfort of confrontation.
Cons: Nothing changes. No history books are written about you. Twenty years from now, people like you are forced to follow this same dumb rule.
You and I both resist quietly, together.
Pros: Resisting quietly can be beautiful, and among marginalized people, it is often the safest option. It can look like a mother and daughter giving each other pep talks when the patriarchy gets them down. It can look like creating a sanctuary together at home for other kids at school, where friends can come, change into the clothes that best suit them, play their music loud, and/or make feminist zines a la “Moxie.” It can look like divesting focus from this particular school culture and placing it on community extracurriculars or future schools – hopefully places full of other sensitive people who are putting their talents to use via art, education or healing. Anything that reminds you of who you are outside of school, and who the real enemy is, constitutes quiet resistance.
Cons: You have to follow this dumb rule between now and then, and so do the kids coming into the school, and the ones after that.
You leave.
Pro: Maybe you can easily find a place that better aligns with your values, and you breathe in a deep sigh of relief. Maybe things get so bad that any option would be better than this one. Leaving can be brave.
Con: You have to start all over in a new place, make new friends, and ultimately that may compromise your sense of comfort and belonging about as much as following this dumb rule. You become The One Who Got Out of Your Hometown, and you are free, gloriously free for a time, but your hometown doesn’t get any better. And when you find you want to move home to be closer to your mom so that she can watch your kids, you realize they are going to have to go to this same local school, and follow this same dumb rule.
If you are not in imminent danger, and have some say in how the place is run, it can make sense to explore other options.
You resist openly.
Pro: You get to feel powerful, to make your voice heard, and to do it your way.
There is no rule that says that one has to resist injustice dramatically, or violently, like we see in the movies. Choosing nonviolent means of engaging the conscience of those in the opposition, rather than drawing their ire, is the special gift of sensitive, conscientious people. Think of Jonas in The Giver, Neo in The Matrix and Lyra in The Golden Compass — all exquisitely intuitive and empathic people, too. It is those gifts, not their physical strength, that allows them to defeat much bigger and seemingly more powerful foes.
The same is true for the writers and activists that have imagined for us the present in which we are living now. Of course, we might think immediately of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was a powerful writer and insistent on nonviolent protest as the best strategy for success. But we might also think of Sojourner Truth, who spoke eloquently on the need for Black women to have both freedom and the vote; Gandhi, who was instrumental in toppling an empire through nonviolent means; and Marshall B. Rosenberg, whose Nonviolent Communication framework is used by activists the world over. Or the many architects of American policies designed to protect children and their rights, and not just to take them away. Rules like Title 9 and the IDEA Act. All sensitive, conscientious people.
Imagine that. Using those traits as a way to fight, instead of as a reason not to.
Con: It might feel uncomfortable to speak up, the first time you try it. But, well… aren’t you already uncomfortable, in those dumb shorts? What do you have to lose?
If Millie goes for Door #4, you can brainstorm a letter together, following the aforementioned steps of nonviolent communication, which I teach my teen students to use every year.
Resisting using nonviolent communication is simple and powerful. It never feels anticlimactic to me, even if it’s not as epic as, say, Neo’s ninja moves in The Matrix. Nor does it feel “dramatic” in a negative way, a method some might associate with “being a Karen.”
Saying what you see, knowing how you feel, connecting with what you value, and asking for what you want are not easy things to do. Participating in this process feels like a powerful means of shedding layer after layer of constricting, ill-fitting clothing. It feels like claiming the peaceful power that is our birthright.
You can send your nonviolent letter directly, signed by both of you, to school or district leadership. You can send it signed by you alone, or even signed anonymously, through a trusted member of the PTA. What matters is that you help each other to write it, following each part of this powerful process. (If folks would like to see an example of this, feel free to say so in the comments — I think this post is long enough as it is.)
If Millie doesn’t go for Door #4 this time – that’s also OK. The door of initiation never opens just once. You and I both know that there is no shortage of opportunities for women to fight the system.
No matter what Millie chooses, you can choose to keep the communication lines open with your sensitive kiddo, for as long as you can. Invite her to read the initiatory stories and watch the initiatory movies mentioned above with her, so that she has role models for empathic resistance when she’s ready. Maybe she’ll also dig the deliciously creepy short story “Ponies,” about the price we pay for fitting in. Or “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” a short story by sci-fi great Ursula K. LeGuin, best paired with “The Ones Who Stay and Fight,” the brilliant rejoinder to that story by N.K. Jemisin. They will help her to spot the many guises of bias, and to consider how she might respond to it in her own unique way.
Keep the communication lines open with your own inner kiddo, too. The one who may be calling out for a bit of attention from you now. Feed her adult books that let her know she’s not crazy. If you’re into academic-but-accessible tomes, you might dig into Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire, which I mentioned in the introduction to this series. Or Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks. Or We Want to Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love. If you’re into newsletters, you might read the liberatory work of other mothers here on Substack too, like
of and and of . Both have played a pivotal role in shaping how I see the world this year as a writer and reader, and how I move through it in my own soft, transgressive, mothery body.Or maybe you won’t read any of those things. You don’t have to. You also have your own stories to tell, about when you’ve learned when to walk away, and how you’ve learned to fight. Maybe you just need to know that you’re not the only one telling them, that these other mothers and me – we’ve got you. You just have to keep framing the choices with your stories, and letting your daughter write her own.
One day, we might all find we’re living in a better world we can’t imagine now, because you did.