Self image issues at 3 years old? Updated

This morning daughter had a mini-meltdown because she couldn’t wear a dress to school. Recently, more and more she has been asking to wear dresses and I realized that the other girls wear them almost every day. So, I’ll let her wear a dress when the weather permits. This morning, however, the dress conversation took a completely different route because she insisted that she would not be a princess if she didn’t wear a dress. THEN…she said that she wasn’t beautiful because she wasn’t a princess.

OMG….what am I supposed to do or tell her when I hear these comments. I tried to reassure her that she IS a princess regardless of what she wears and that she IS beautiful because beauty is not based on what you wear but the kind of person that you are. I’m not really sure whether my response made much sense to her because it may have been too high level. It shocked me that she made the dress issue a little deeper to what I would consider a self image issue. I am also amazed at the power of peer pressure of 3 year old girls!!! I cannot imagine what issues I’ll be dealing with at 7 or 10 or 12 if self image is already an issue at 3.

Then I get to her class and without fail, I hear the discussion about who’s in a dress and who isn’t, so I could totally understand what she was going through. She wanted to go home with me. I felt/feel helpless and I don’t know what to say to her to make her feel better. I guess the easy solution would be to let her wear a dress tomorrow, but there is so much more going on here.

Any suggestions and all suggestions are welcome??? I have about 4-5 hours to figure something out.

UPDATE – I let her wear a dress this morning. I’ll work on the other issues a little bit at a time.