Buying your teenager clothes? Nicola Harrison's advice is, 'Forget it!'
There comes a time in every teenager鈥檚 life, when they have to make a stand and say;
"Look Mum, please stop bringing home all those nerdy clothes. I want to choose my own."
It鈥檚 a tricky moment.
"What's wrong with the nerdy clothes?" you ask in a hurt tone.
"They look very smart."
The last thing an adolescent boy wants to look, is smart. I should know, I've got two of them. And smart is a serious turn-off, I assure you. Baggy is where it's at. Anything that's seven sizes too big, five inches too long in the leg and slung so low over the hips that it makes Builder鈥檚 Bum look positively modest by comparison.
Never buy clothes for your teenager unless he or she is with you. It doesn't matter how many hours you traipse around looking for something they'll like, whatever you choose will be wrong.
"Look what I bought you in town today. A nice new
T-shirt."
The face drops. "Oh."
"What d'you mean, oh? I turned Debenhams inside out to find this."
"But Mum, it's got stripes."
You stare at him in bewilderment. "I thought you said stripes were okay."
"Well they are. Usually. It's just that those are the wrong kind."
When teenagers start to think about their appearance, they are really asking; 'who am I?' Clothes are the bricks and mortar of their fragile young identities, and when parents insist on controlling their children's wardrobes, they are clearly stating, 'this is the person I want you to be.'
And when each new purchase is rejected, as indeed it must, the child is simply replying; 'Yes, but it's not the person I am.'
It's a sign to us, their parents, that our children are growing up, growing away, and that, sometime soon, we must love them and let them go.
