Conflict-Free Mother and Daughter Shopping Trips

Can it be conflict-free?

By Simone Ellin

It’s Sunday afternoon at the Towson Town Center and I am standing in a dark room with fake trees, billboards with scantily-clothed Californians and loud pulsating music that I don’t recognize. Once my eyes adjust to the light, I notice scores of other 30- and 40-something moms leaning against display tables, peering at price tags, and nudging their tween girls, all with matching polos, pony tails and paisly Vera Bradley purses, toward the sales racks. My eyes meet another mom’s and we exchange a look of solidarity and resignation.

It is not without mixed feelings that I enter stores like this. I ask myself, is this really an appropriate venue for a 12-year-old shopper? Yet I understand the wish to look like everyone else, the desire to be cool and part of the crowd.

It seems like yesterday when I fought with my own mother, an immigrant and survivor of the Holocaust, who couldn’t understand why I needed to have the same jeans as every other 7th grader. A day school student, my daughter Xandra will attend at least 50 b’nai mitzvah celebrations over the next 18 months and she had better not be caught in the same dress often enough for her friends to notice. So I indulge her . . . to a point. I am well aware of the dangers of overindulging my daughter, but controlling my motherly impulses can be easier said than done.

Not long ago, I used to shop for my daughter’s clothes when she wasn’t even with me. Nowadays, trusting myself to know what she’s going to like is a risky proposition. Similarly, Dr. Randi Braman of Owings Mills has noticed a change in her 6th grade daughter, Maddie. “She has definite ideas about what she likes now and she’ll say, ‘Mom, you’re picking things that you like and you’re not paying attention to my taste,’”says Braman.

One day recently, Braman recalls, Maddie wanted a new top to wear to the middle school dance. “Well, it was that same night and I didn’t have time to take her shopping that day. She had several new things in her closet, gifts she had received, but she couldn’t picture any of her friends wearing those styles, so she refused to wear any of them. She wants to wear what her friends wear and she hates when I make her try on the things that I like.”

Karen Mazer, owner of Synchronicity, a Pikesville boutique that specializes in fashions for girls, tweens and teens, and mother of a 17-year-old daughter and two sons, sees mothers and their young teenagers shopping together on a daily basis. “It’s always an interesting dynamic,” says Mazer. “A mother’s choice is often the ‘kiss of death’. Usually, we instantly realize when the mother-daughter tension starts and we try to pull mom aside. ‘Do me a favor,’ we might say, ‘Show me what you like, but don’t tell your daughter.’ See, if I show something to a customer, she will always try it on, but if her mother shows her something, she’ll immediately have a negative response.”

Mazer admits that she and her own daughter, Julie, are not different than many of the mother-daughter pairs she sees in her store. “Recently,” says Mazer, “Julie was at the shop looking for prom and graduation dresses. My staff said, ‘Okay Karen, go in your office. We’ll call you when it’s time to choose.’ It’s not that she doesn’t want my approval,” she explains. “I’ve come to realize that especially in a close mother-child relationship, it’s natural for the child to push away. It can be hurtful to the parent, but the child needs to achieve autonomy,” notes Mazer.

Randi Miller, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist with a private practice in Mount Washington. She is also the mother of two teenage daughters, Rachel, 16, and Hallie, 13, so she has a great deal of personal experience shopping with teen and tween girls. Dr. Miller believes that shopping can be a great activity for mothers and daughters.

“When they shop together, mothers and daughters can spend time with one another, learn what styles they like, and children can learn about budgeting. It’s great bonding, if you can do it without too much conflict,” she says. “Some mothers,” Miller says, “live vicariously through their children, encouraging them to wear things they weren’t able to wear as teens.” The result is that daughters may be dressing inappropriately.

In other cases, says Miller, “mothers and daughters may disagree about what clothing is appropriate, or how much money should be spent. Especially in this economy, it is really hard for kids to understand that parents may not be able to afford what they did before,” she says.

Miller stresses, “Mothers need to listen to their girls. They need to recognize why it may be important for kids to have certain things — a pair of Uggs, or a certain type of jeans, in order to fit in with their peers. Validate your teen’s feelings, listen to her and then compromise.”

Shopping for clothes together, says Miller, is also a great way to learn how girls are adjusting to their changing bodies. “While girls are trying on clothes, mothers can listen to what their daughters say. If your daughter says, ‘I look terrible,’ you can find out what’s going on. Is your daughter having a problem with her body image and is an intervention needed?”

Mazer is particularly sensitive to girls’ issues around body image. Despite the fact that she owns a fashion business, Mazer never loses sight of what’s really important.

“Fashion often dictates how women of any age feel about themselves. Mothers who come in with daughters often have their own body image issues and they transfer those to their daughters. When I hear this in the store, I will sometimes step in. I quietly say to the mom, ‘You know, your daughter is so gorgeous.’ And if a mother’s comments are really hurtful, I might even say, ‘Please, don’t do this.’”

“When I was growing up, I was large and couldn’t shop in the same stores my friends did. People in the stores weren’t so nice about pointing that out. So I’m super-sensitive about this. I try to carry all sizes, so that every girl can find something that fits her,” she says.

Jenny Wingrat of Mount Washington, is the mother of Rachel, age 11. To date, they are a conflict-free shopping team. However, they do find fault with the styles they have found at the mall. “Recently,” recalls Wingrat, “Rachel and I went shopping for some shorts for our vacation. Everything was so short. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘She’s 11. Does she really need to wear something like this?’ Rachel agreed with me. She didn’t want to wear them either, said Wingrat.

Rachel is about a year away from the whirlwind bar/bat mitzvah year, a time when tensions between mothers and daughters can run especially high. Initiated into the glamour of cocktail and black-tie functions, and highly attuned to what they may be viewing on television (Think “My Sweet Sixteen” and “America’s Top Model”), many 12 and 13-year-old girls embrace styles entirely too mature for their ages.

Miller believes that parents and children should sit down and discuss what they think is appropriate for casual, cocktail and formal parties, and then go through magazines together to get ideas on styles that both can agree on.

“Make sure you both are on the same page,” she says. “Make sure your child is not looking like a rock star. It’s probably not the image your child wants to project.”

At the same time, she adds, parents shouldn’t be too rigid in what they deem as acceptable.

“Talk to kids openly and cooperatively,” she says. But don’t be afraid to say no. Parents shouldn’t be afraid to speak up.”

May 2009