Florida mom Liana DeGeorge bought her 7-year-old daughter a pair of heels, and some on the internet indicted her for “bad parenting.”
In an interview with TODAY.com, she defends her decision.
“My 7-year-old daughter begging me to buy her first pair of heels,” DeGeorge, 31, wrote on an Instagram reel. “I told her, let’s just wait a few more years. She wouldn’t let me take them off. And those tears broke my heart, but I just wasn’t ready for my baby girl to grow up. Even her brother was trying to convince me to let her get them.”
DeGeorge wrote, “So I cracked & let me tell you she SHINED in those heels.”
In the video, a dry-eyed and spunky Luna races out of the store wearing her new heels and walks down the street.
The mom explained her purchase in the video caption:
“We decided they are special occasion shoes … I kind of wish they had Chanels in her size to make the mad people like, really reallyyyyyy mad #sorrynotsorry.”
Some Instagram commenters claimed the shoes would “deform” the girl’s feet and that Luna looked too grown up:
- “Why stop there, next time give a glass of wine and a smoke.”
- “Learn to say no.”
- “7 year olds don’t need heels, I don’t care that she begged for them. Tell her to suck it up, she’s a kid and you’re her parent. Act like it.”
- “I was fine until I saw her swish walk. She’s SEVEN.”
- “Moral of the story: cry if you want something.”
People who liked the shoes differentiated between stilettos (long, thin and very high) and chunkier heels.
- “I had a pair of heels when I was little — it’s every little girl’s dream to be like their mama.”
- “Did no one in this comment section have dress-up heels as a kid?”
- “Why are people bugging out? It’s not like she’s wearing stilettos. I’ve been wearing those type of low block ‘heels’ since I was 6.”
- “The way her confidence was ACTIVATED once she got them is what life is all about.”
DeGeorge tells TODAY.com that the shoes, advertised as kids’ products on the Steve Madden website, were an impulse buy at a department store.
“It’s not like I went into the adult section and found a tiny size (for my daughter),” she says. “People made it into something that it wasn’t.”
When Luna wanted to try on the shoes in the children’s section, DeGeorge hesitated.
“I said, ‘Honey, heels could hurt your feet if you walk in them too long or be uncomfortable’ but she wanted to show me how well she could walk, and even jump, wearing them,” she says.
DeGeorge was nearly sold on Luna’s demonstration, but she checked in with her husband who determined the call was best made by mom.
DeGeorge agreed to buy the shoes.
“I say no to lots of things,” she explaines. “My daughter will say, ‘Mommy, my friends have TikTok’ and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?! You guys are 7!”
DeGeorge says Luna is in a “Mommy and Me” phase due in part to watching her mom wear heeled shoes. “People say, ‘Let her be a child and don’t let her grow up too fast’ but this big-girl moment is part of her childhood,” says DeGeorge.
In the past few months, her mom says Luna wore the shoes to a restaurant and to church, without controversy.
“She’s not wearing them to the playground,” says DeGeorge.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
