Shopping with teens …

All my kids hate shopping for clothes.  They are fine with me buying them clothes, bringing them home, trying them on, returning them because they don’t fit and doing it all over again (multiple times –  like I am a personal shopper!).  This year I decided that I was going to reverse the tide and have them come with me so I would only have to make only one trip for school clothes.  This was my first mistake.  We started this weekend and I began with the boys.

We went to the mall and one got cranky almost immediately (this was a bad sign).  He let me know in no uncertain terms that we he was not going to buy pants at this particular store.  I put on my take-no-prisioners attitude and said that I really didn’t care (I might have been a bit more forceful than that) and I demanded that he try on 4 pairs of something  (second mistake).  By this point, my voice was raised and the store clerk was staying quite far away from us.  Yes, he did try on 4 pairs of pants but even those that I think he might have liked he refused to buy because I had thrown down the gauntlet … the walls of my plan were cracking and I was 15 minutes in.

Shortly thereafter, my phone rang – I took it (third mistake).  I proceeded to walk them toward a sporting goods store and whispered to them to look for pants and sweatshirts.  By the time I had gotten off the phone, they both had picked out expensive tennis shoes, which were not even on the list, and no pants and no sweatshirts.  I waived my red flag, took them home and picked up my daughter.

She also dislikes shopping.  What’s interesting to me is that when I think something looks fantastic, her eyes are rolling way back into her head!   How did I go from being a cool mom to one with no taste in clothes?  The icing on the cake yesterday was when we were in a store where I shop and she said,  “Those look like old people clothes. Sorry Mom.  Get used to it.”  We were able to get a few things and then left.  I was exhausted.

Clearly my little experiment didn’t work.  I am going to reclaim my title as the household personal shopper.  Life’s just a tad bit easier that way.

Have a great Monday!