Shopping With my Daughter

I love shopping with my daughter – until we get down to purchasing that special dress for that special event. This weekend I took my fifteen year old daughter to buy a dress for the dance team banquet. Oh, yes it was a lot of fun. . . Every dress I picked out was a “mommy dress” and oh so boring. Her favorite choice, in my maternal opinion, was too casual and too floral for this event.


I remember shopping with my mother in the 70’s. Fashions were changing and when I wanted to buy the bare back top with matching hot pants, it caused quite a commotion. It took some compromising and I walked out of the mall with a coordinating hot pants set, faded blue pants and a ruffled red top. It was that’s season favorite.

There’s something about teenage fashions and moms. Generations come and go and daughters and mothers continue to clash on the subject of fashion. I want to believe it doesn’t have anything to do with living vicariously. I’ve been fifteen before and no, I don’t want to go there again.

Instead I believe it has everything to do with independence and power. Deep down I knew, when shopping with my mother, that a bareback halter top wouldn’t be the most practical blouse to buy. I didn’t want to give my mother the power or satisfaction of being right. I was my own person making my own choices. On the other hand, when shopping with my daughter, as much as I wanted to help I felt frustrated over my powerlessness. Like me many years ago, my daughter was going to make her decision and my opinion was no longer important.

And, so the floral dress it was. We bought the dress, took it home and after speaking to her peers, she decided she needed a more formal dress to wear – one already in her closet. Imagine that. My daughter looked lovely at the banquet tonight. Her father and I were proud of the young lady that she is.

Next week she wears the floral dress to her friend’s graduation. Off we go to buy new shoes . . . I love shopping with my daughter.