I missed that it was his house. Even there, I wouldn’t have reprimanded the girl. Walk away. Go get something out of the fridge. Turn your chair. There are options.
I made a point of NOT engaging her in an argument as the child was right there.
What I inferred from her was that I was some kind of perv for even NOTICING her dress was hiked up in the first place. (trust me their was nothing subtle about it)
But like Count Blucher said; it was the 800lb gorilla ion the room.
Wait, her FEET were on the TABLE and no one thought that was an issue?
You didn’t even need to go for the panty angle … how about “Hey, let’s remember that feet don’t belong on the table, okay?” I think you should have said that even if the little girl was wearing ski pants.
Not to be argumentative, but did he really “reprimand” her? If his story is taken at face value, he nicely requested that she put her legs down so that she wasn’t showing two grown men her underwear. And as a mom of three girls, I’ll tell you now that some of those little girl underwear don’t always cling appropriately and she could have been showing more than her Dora the Explorer prints. I’d say something if I were in his position - assuming the mom didn’t notice. It wouldn’t occur to me that she might have noticed and decided there was nothing wrong with the way her daughter was sitting.
Don’t second guess yourself. You should not have left the “not very ladylike” part out. Any self respecting dad would ave said the same thing practically word for word. There is a subspecies of mom that bridles at ANYONE giving correction to their precious snowflakes no matter how in-appropriate the child’s behavior or well intentioned the advice. I suspect this reaction is mostly embarrassment of the way the child’s behaviors might reflect on them as a parent, and they react defensively.
Beating on someone for noticing is insane. You were 100% correct.
If you roommate marries this woman I suspect he will have an interesting time of things.
But the “It’s not lady-like” elevates the issue into one of sexual propriety. It says she can’t sit like that because she’s a girl and it’s not much of a leap for her to realize that she was showing off her girly parts to a man and it was a big enough deal for him to call attention to it.
I mean, when I reached the age that I really needed to wear a bra, it was my mom who told me about it, not my dad. I’d have been mortified if my dad had told me, and ten thousand times more mortified if a friend of my father’s had told me. How is this any different?
The “not very ladylike” thing just seems too gender specific. Is it “unladylike” or “ungentlemanly” when a guy’s…uh, mouse is out of his house (to paraphrase Gunther on that “Friends” episode)? I’d just say it’s plain creepy.
But he’s not her dad. He’s not someone she trusts to have her best interests at heart, not someone she loves and who she knows loves her in return. It was a very personal comment, and I don’t think you should make personal comments like that to a friend-of-a-friend. This is totally different from other kinds of misbehavior: if she’d been throwing food at the dinner table or hitting the cat, I’d say that the OP was well within bounds.
I’d say your interpretation is exactly correct. What I don’t get is what’s supposed to be wrong with any of it.
I can see where it might seem unfair that boys would rarely encounter this issue 'cause they don’t wear skirts. But if a 6 year old boy was somehow airing out his block and tackle in front of strangers, what’s wrong with telling him that it looks ungentlemanly?
I remember a time, as a small child in Louisiana, when not only was it considered normal to expect to be corrected by adults other than your parents, it was considered normal for them to whip your ass. I can remember incidents like throwing rocks at a neighbor lady’s house (I was maybe 6 or 7), having her come out of the house, whip us with a switch and then march us home to our parents. These days, an adult would probably get arrested and sued for something like that. Back then, the child’s parent apologized to the neighbor and thanked them. There was something functional about that, as strange as it may seem (and people knew the difference between correction and abuse – those switches stung, but they didn’t injure) – a real sense of community responsibility (and the flip side was that a kid could always depend on those same neighbors for help if they needed it). People are too insular and mistrustful now.
I’m rambling, but to cut to the chase, the OP is not a creep. I have daughters and I probably would have said much the same thing.
Well, just because people did in the old days in Louisiana doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. In fact, that sounds vaguely creepy to me. Whipping kids’ asses.
I can guess, though, that the mom took SHAKES’s remark as implicit criticism of your parenting. “Oh yeah, you think I’m a bad mom? Well YOU’RE a perve!” Especially as she appears to be a single mother. Divorced? Never married? Either way, her parenting skills might have come up as an issue with other adults in the past.
Because there is an age when we learn that grown-up rules of modesty apply to us. It’s humiliating to have someone you don’t know well point out to you that you are now that age. If I see a six year old boy with their fly unzipped, I am not going to call everyone’s attention to it. Public nudity taboos are a big deal.
Tell the girl to put her feet on the floor, but don’t imply “because I can see your panties”. It’s humiliating.
Seems like kind of an uptight attitude to me. If the boy’s old enough, I might jokingly say: “Say Billy-Bob, you know what XYZ” means?
I don’t think kids develop a complex about things like nudity except insofar as they pick it up from their caregivers. As described by the OP, I’d say the mom would have made the girl more self-conscious by her reaction than anything SHAKES did.
I appreciate that per your described history, you have a highly sensitized prospective and some personal psychological issues re this scenario, but in normal circumstances an adult commenting in a corrective manner on a child exposing themselves in front of adults, in a culture where this is seen as inappropriate, does not, by any stretch of the imagination, fall into the category of “very personal” comment. The child does not know any better, and is not an adult. In normal circumstances a comment to close your legs, or pull down your dress is a manners issue not some psycholically damaging grenade that needs to be handled with a bomb squad or ignored.
Because it doesn’t look ungentlemanly, it’s just inappropriate. To someone that age, being reprimanded for being unladylike may not have the desired effect of reminding her to not spread her legs in a skirt, it may be telling her that women aren’t allowed to spread their legs at all. And while I think there’s an “angle of decency” beyond which either gender should not have their legs spread when sitting, saying that girls can do this and boys can do this introduces gender stereotypes that a kid that age doesn’t need to deal with.
Wait, what did she say?
It wasn’t horrid, but yeah, the ladylike thing was one of those offhand remarks that’s steeped in sexism. Plus, she’s got the rest of her life to feel ashamed about her body!
That’s generally been my observation regarding correction of children by people other than their parents.
People making a big fuss about other people correcting their little snowflakes tends to create a problem where one did not exist. The child generally takes the correction well (after all, they’re corrected by non-parental adults all the time in school, on sports teams and in many other places), but suddenly Mommy charges in guns blazing HOW DARE YOU and presto, there is now injury where none existed before.
They’re teaching their kids to be either victims or self-centered assholes who refuse to be corrected by others. How Dare You Correct ME!!! Well sunshine, all your life you’re going to be corrected by others, particularly by your future bosses. Get used to it, stop making it a big deal, get over yourself.
And hey, if you’re sitting on MY porch and you want to yell at me about correcting your child, I might remind you that you’re out of line in verbally assaulting me in my own house and I will invite you to leave and not return.
Totally non-creepy. I’ve always been rather gymnastic and I had an uncle or male friend of the family tell me more than once that my girl bits were showing and could I please remove my feet from behind my head. This sounds like I’m being funny but I’m not - I’m really flexable - when I was a kid I would tie myself into a pretzle for shits and giggles, with no regard to what I had on - sometimes I was wearing a dress.
Frankly, if this woman’s mind went to you being creepy for asking her daughter NOT to show you her bits, there’s something wrong with HER. She should be thankful you weren’t coping an eyeful. (Not saying you would - obviously, but I’m sure there are creepy guys out there who would).
If the parent was right there, I’d probably say something to the parent first (and I probably wouldn’t use the term, “ladylike”), but I’ve given mild rebukes or instructions to other people’s kids before (“hey there, sport, that’s Uncle Dio’s guitar, please don’t bang on it. Bring it over here and I’ll show you how to hold it”), and they’ve done the same with mine. I don’t take it as some kind of condemnation of my parenting.