My typical outfit for the last 11 years has been jeans, a t-shirt and something to cover my head due to alopecia, typically a bandanna of sorts or something like what cancer patients wear when they do chemo. I shave my head so that the significant loss of hair due to alopecia doesn’t break me every time I look in the mirror.

When I drop off my kids and pick them up I am in my usual attire, that’s what I am comfortable in, when you work in IT and they let you wear it every day you get used to it. Depending on how I am feeling I may wear a “nicer” top when going to events at the school (parent/teacher conference, back to school night).

I volunteered at my second graders school for one hour this week. It consisted of sitting on a stool next to a filing system where the kids school work goes and then putting those papers in the corresponding folders. Easy enough for my wonky brain and broken body, though I must admit that doing that for an hour, as simple of a task it may be, actually wore me out. I felt more foggy and fatigued than usual but my kid was so excited I was there.

That being said, and knowing that I already draw attention with a service dog, I put on a more business casual top for that day and my son picked out what was going on my head. He did not approve of the plain black scarf I was going to wear tightly around my scalp with a knot that made it look like a bun at the back.

He is keenly aware of appearance at the ripe age of 7. Most recently he likes to check himself out in a full length mirror attached to a cabinet in the living room where we keep the snow gear. He wears light weight jackets around his waist like an accessory, and makes careful selections about his shirt each day. I expect this from my 13 year-old, I wasn’t prepared for it from my 7 year old.

The oldest made a comment the morning I went to volunteer asking  me where I was going because I was more dressed up than usual. While I would like to think people should just accept us how we are, fashion choices and all, I know that is not the world we live in. It saddens me to think that what I may be wearing will have an impact on how classmates treat my son, it doesn’t make sense and yet that is the world we apparently live in.

Until the world changes, I will continue to let my kids advise me on attire when I am attending something with them or at their school because I love them and don’t want their life to be any more complicated than it is having a mom with MS, Meneire’s disease and a service dog.