Shopping with a Tween

Shop­ping with a tween has me befud­dled.
Per­haps what has me so con­fused and dazed is the fact that not so very long ago, I could go shop­ping for my lit­tle princess and she loved every­thing I pro­duced. She actu­ally wore it – even wore it out.
My two sons were the same. No fuss, no bother. Such easy to please chil­dren, I’d smugly think. So grate­ful and uncom­pli­cated.
And then my daugh­ter turned 11 and things changed. She became what is com­monly labelled a ‘tween’. Not quite teen, not quite girl. An ‘in between’. Sud­denly the cool fac­tor crept in and mom’s offer­ings weren’t so appre­ci­ated any­more.
So, decid­ing it was time for mom and daugh­ter to con­nect, for her to dis­play a lit­tle inde­pen­dence, free­dom of choice and matu­rity, the two of us embarked on what I’d roman­ti­cally labelled ‘a lit­tle bond­ing retail ther­apy’. Per­haps I could also nudge her out of shorts and T-shirts and into fem­i­nine lit­tle sun­dresses. Oh how wrong I was.
After the first half hour I had an inkling of how dif­fi­cult the next two hours were going to be. Still, I remained pos­i­tive, breathed deeply and even man­aged to offer a lit­tle stopover for a sus­tain­ing cof­fee and milk­shake. It was clear, how­ever, that I was in way over my head.
The man­u­fac­tur­ers of this tween cloth­ing didn’t help. ‘My Mom’s a Cash Reg­is­ter’ or ‘FBI (Finds Boys Irri­tat­ing)’ embla­zoned on T-shirts didn’t exactly bode well.
’Who­ever designs this cloth­ing either has no chil­dren, or has an intense dis­like for them,’ I mut­tered on dis­cov­ery of yet another pretty pink t-shirt with a skull embed­ded in the logo.
I recalled a friend and mother of four telling me how she went shop­ping for her chil­dren at a pop­u­lar chain store and in exas­per­a­tion, ended up com­plain­ing to man­age­ment that all their children’s clothes looked as though they’d been designed for pimps and pros­ti­tutes. I saw her point.
We sol­diered on. For­tu­nately my tween wasn’t too keen on the gothic line. She also failed to see what was so amus­ing about Cau­tion: Blonde Think­ing. Han­nah Mon­tana was out, and so was High School Musi­cal 2.
Note to cloth­ing design­ers: While chil­dren may enjoy cer­tain movies and tele­vi­sion shows, they don’t nec­es­sar­ily want their star’s faces beam­ing up at them from a T-shirt. That’s called overkill. And while I’m at it, a note to teeny wee­nie pop stars: Stick to what you’re good at: Singing.
Per­haps we could try the women’s shops instead. The extra small may just fit. Not much help there either. Too long, cleav­age too low…straps too long. Just wrong.
We leave, exhausted, irri­ta­ble and empty handed. Not entirely true, because I did man­age to find a rather appeal­ing pair of shorts and some shoes for myself but that didn’t count. We were there for the tween, not the mid­dle aged mom, (would that be a mam?).
Take Two. Sev­eral weeks later, we embark, through a mix­ture of sheer des­per­a­tion (daugh­ter is now alter­nat­ing three T-shirts), on yet another shop­ping excur­sion.
The sec­ond trip is even less suc­cess­ful. Worse still, I lose my daugh­ter and my cool. A lit­tle mix up with shops of a sim­i­lar name had me wait­ing in one spot and she in another. After pass­ing an anx­ious few min­utes, I could no longer restrain myself – a fer­tile imag­i­na­tion had her kid­napped, shoved in a dubi­ous look­ing mini van with dark tinted win­dows by a Cau­casian man in his thir­ties at which point I alert the shop­ping cen­tre secu­rity giv­ing a detailed descrip­tion of my daugh­ter, ‘petite, blonde, wear­ing shorts, Dun­lops and an orange t-shirt….‘
’Mom! Where were you?’ inter­rupted my tear­ful ram­bling. My non­plussed daugh­ter found me first.
So, suf­fice to say, my recent shop­ping expe­ri­ence with my ‘tween’ has not been the bond­ing, joy­ful expe­ri­ence one might expect of a mum and her only dar­ling daugh­ter.
Deter­mined to over­come this minor obsta­cle, we embark on one final shop­ping expe­di­tion. Admit­tedly, a post-Christmas Sale time is per­haps not entirely suit­able for a focussed, effi­cient shop.
The past expe­ri­ence had been bathed in a roman­tic glow. This was dif­fer­ent. I knew exactly what I was in for. This time, instead of joy­ful expec­ta­tion, there was a mix­ture of dread and fore­bod­ing. I ignored these feel­ings and imbibed two strong cups of cof­fee instead. I took a pos­i­tive approach, namely: ‘Please, Lord, give me strength.‘
The shops are crowded with bar­gain hunters, re-invigorated by the Sale, Sale and more Sale signs. We try to remain focussed and res­olute. I have, through pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence, learnt to con­trol my enthu­si­asm. Too much and she loses inter­est. Too lit­tle enthu­si­asm and she accuses me of being dis­in­ter­ested. The trick, when asked one’s opin­ion, is to offer just the right amount of inter­est. A sort of casual ‘oh, yes, that might work – the colour’s lovely on you,’ and then to amble over to some adult cloth­ing and pre­tend to be deeply engrossed in a sage green sarong. Keep it cool, keep it casual.
Finally, she spots some­thing she actu­ally likes. And sur­prise, sur­prise, I like it too. It’s a white, fem­i­nine top and it’s not a T-shirt! Oh the joys! She tries it on. It fits. She ACTUALLY LIKES IT! I want to leap around the shop in pure ela­tion, telling everyon: ‘We’ve found it! We’ve found it! A shirt, we’ve found a shirt! And see? It’s a beau­ti­ful fem­i­nine lacy white shirt, it’s not a T-shirt!”
Of course, I am restrained, calm and bor­der­line ambiva­lent. ‘Look, it’s on sale too, that’s great – should we go for cof­fee?‘
We leave, my daugh­ter clutch­ing her first pur­chase in what has seemed like an eter­nity of shop trawl­ing. We amble, the lovely daugh­ter and her lovely mum, into a book­shop like lovely daugh­ters and their lovely mums do. We wan­der into a shoe shop as lovely mums and daugh­ters do. And then the lovely mum realised her lovely daugh­ter is with­out her par­cel.
’Where’s the shirt? You haven’t lost it already have you??’ the now not so lovely mum shrieks.
And then the lovely mum turns mean, really mean. I think she said some­thing along the lines of ‘I’M GOING TO MURDER YOU!!!’ and a few other things she chooses to for­get. Of course, she apol­o­gised later, but given the cir­cum­stances, this lit­tle out­burst was surely for­giv­able.
We retraced our steps. No-one has handed any par­cel in at the book­shop counter. Per­haps cus­tomer ser­vice will help. Cus­tomer ser­vice can­not help. There is no par­cel. Lovely mother is long gone. Angry, frus­trated, mur­der­ous mother has replaced her.
We leave mobile num­bers and stomp to the car, utterly defeated. Surely it can­not end like this?
And then, the phone call. They’ve found the par­cel.
Lovely mum returns and embraces lovely daugh­ter.
Tween shop­ping? Child’s play.

Words Copy­right © 2009 by Lois Nicholls