Do they have things in grown up sizes?

You’re right that El Que Diran is not just a Latin American thing (although I imagine only Spanish speakers call it that). My uncles are shameless in reminding me how my percieved failures and inability to conform to old-world cultural norms reflect badly on the family, and as such, make it a point to (attempt to) pry into my personal life at any given moment. Because a respectable member of the culture would have been a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or biochemist by now… not a singer (albeit a fairly successful one).

And it all started in jr high, when I simultaneously got into music and started wearing two different color socks.

I guess what I’m saying is that if you don’t teach your daughter the importance of wearing both her socks in the same color, she might grow up to be a successful musician and shame your family with her mad singing skillz. And really, who wants that?

had an issue with my daughter when she was in preschool not wanting to get dressed at all. Somehow if she could choose her clothes that wasn’t enough. Maybe she wanted to struggle with whatever I was asking her to do. I just got so tired of fighting with her one day we just went like that, in her nightgown, hair such a rat’s nest she couldn’t even push it back out of her eyes at all. So she was like that all day. I explained this to the teacher in the morning but she just looked at me funny and I walked out pretty quickly! But you know what happened, the kids asked her why she was like that and guess what! Never had a problem after then. No more morning fights about clothes. Until much older when she had to be in uniform. You know what I let her sit in detention all day because I refused to leave work and go get her proper clothing. Oh and by that age it was not cured with one episode but I didn’t change my position. Yes I think the principal thought my mom skills were very weak. 
I just couldn’t be fighting with her all the time over small stuff. Whatever the people at school might think…

actually had a coworker literally tell me I was a bad parent for letting my 15-year-old daughter dye her hair blue. Come one, anything temporary is temporary! And I will still put my relationship with my daughter (19 now) up against anybody’s who thinks their teenager is a perfect angel. Ha. I know where these kids really are on Saturday night because I see them over in my neighborhood buying drugs, driving their mom’s car. My daughter talks to me about what she is feeling and doing. I don’t have to assume she’s not into anything dangerous because I KNOW. That’s the important thing. No, I haven’t been her buddy or her friend, I’m her mom. I have stepped in when and where needed. But it’s been easier for her to give me real information, not hide things, when she knew I wasn’t going to freak out about something irrelevant. If I said not to do something, whether she understood at that moment or not she knew there was a good reason having to do with safety or people’s real feelings, not appearances. No not that she obeyed me all the time but she has arrived safely at adulthood as a very responsible and loving person, and now she talks to me just because she wants to, how many 19 year olds do that? I think you’re on the right track with Mr. Black, just keep letting him know you value him for what he is not for some conception of what you or someone else thought he’d be or should be, and keep the honest communication going.