My daughter is about to turn 6. She loves My Little Pony, going to Red Sox games, having mommy paint her nails with sparkles, playing in splash pads, yoga, and wearing dresses that spin. It’s a delicious age where growing up and increasing independence are combined with her ever-steady desire to cuddle, talk, and connect with her parents at the end of the day. I’m loving this age. Raising an almost-6-year-old girl is a dream.

But I’m a bit worried about what’s to come. You see, the other day while in downtown Boston, I found myself walking behind two college students. And I noticed something I found kind of appalling: Their butts were showing.

I’m sure you’ve seen it, too — when girls wear shorts that are so incredibly short you can see the bottom part of their butt, not just the upper part of their legs. Is this the new fashion for teenage and college-age girls’ clothes?

I really hope not. Because I’m raising a daughter. And I want to teach her to respect her body and to keep it healthy and strong. I want her to know she’s beautiful. I want her to feel confident in her skin. I want her to have a fully developed sense of self-respect, which includes not walking down the streets of Boston half-naked.

Having your butt hang out of your shorts does not show others that you respect your body. You might respect fashion trends, but that’s not self-respect. Certain parts of your body are not supposed to be shown all of the time. Like — just as an example — your butt. Wearing a swimsuit on the beach is a perfectly acceptable time for a little bit of skin to be shown. I’m fine with that. But Commonwealth Avenue is not where you flaunt that.

Me? I grew up in the age of grunge. We wore baggy jeans with huge rips in them that we wrote on in Sharpie. We wore T-shirts that were too big for us, with giant flannel shirts over them. It was easy to get dressed in the morning — which T-shirt, flannel, and jeans combination would you wear that day? Looking back at my photos in high school and college, I usually wore clothes that were too big for me because that’s what was in. I didn’t have to contend with shopping for girls clothes that exposed my butt or my boobs. I didn’t even have to think about miniskirts, really. It was awesome.

I’m really hoping grunge will make a full resurgence in about five years when my daughter is a tween and starts to go shopping and choose her own clothes. How much easier will life be as a mom if I don’t even have to start explaining why showing your butt shows a lack of self-respect?

But that’s the thing. Being a mom so often means taking the hard road: setting strict rules and following through, even when your kid is yelling and screaming about how you’ve ruined her life — whether we’re talking about shopping for clothes with our girls or anything else! In the long run, however, those strict rules and their consequences teach kids life lessons. Whatever the fashion is as my daughter grows up, I’m hopeful that the values and morals I’ve tried to teach her will help her make the right decisions about what she wears and how she portrays herself to the world.

Or maybe grunge will come back. Hey, a mom can dream, right?