 | Hi, I'm an 18 year old guy, and I just graduated from high school and am heading into college at the University of Minnesota for a computer science degree. During all of high school and much of junior high I've been much like your daughter. I dressed in the baggy, thrift shop clothes, dyed and bleached my hair multiple times, and had long hair nearly the entire time (it's currently about shoulder length), and even had a piercing in my lower lip.
Although I'm not a parent and I really shouldn't be offering parents advice, I can explain my own experiences.
In school I was very well liked by everybody. That means peers, teachers, everyone. At the senior all night party after graduation my mom was voulenteering and a few people actually asked her if I was her son, then told her what a great kid she has. So just as long as she is respecting people and being nice to people you don't have to worry about them not accepting her because of her style.
Although my grades weren't perfect I was always on the B honor roll or better, and in the toughest classes I could take, i.e. Advanced Placement Calculus, Honors Physics, etc. and I now have 19 college credits before taking a single class in college. So you don't have to worry about her grades suffering because of the way she dresses.
Just one more thing to make this post a little longer: it may not be "just a phase" as everybody here seems to state. If it is just a phase for me, it has been a 10 year long phase so far, and is still continuing. This however is really not important. Your daughter can be a complete success in her life, with everybody from peers to authority figures loving her, with good grades in school, and even getting a great job in the future, despite the way she dresses. Much more important than the way she appears is the way she acts. If she is kind to everybody she meets and tries hard in everything she does, she IS a great person, no matter how she looks.
I know this may be a bit late to help the original poster, but maybe it will help someone else a little.
If somebody doesn't want to be your friend because of the way you look, you didn't want to be their friend anyway.
~Jaq |
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