Sartorial Stress: Helping Your Children Make Informed Style Choices If You Don’t Agree With Their Fashion Leanings

We can feel that sense of embarrassment as a parent when we look at our children's style and think that they could do better. In one respect, we can't necessarily force them to wear certain clothes, but it's more about helping guide our children in the right direction in terms of their fashion choices. There are things that we won't agree with, and they will stick their heels in until they get their own way, like getting a tattoo. So what can we do when our children want to make certain style choices that we don't necessarily agree with? 

Provide A Wider Range Of Choices

If they only have two choices, it can feel like they aren't making their own choice. If you give them a wide variety of options to choose from, this gives them the chance to pick their own specific combination of clothes and accessories. That's the big problem when parent and child butt heads, the parent provides a limited number of options, so the child feels stifled regardless. Make it easier on both of you and give them as much choice as possible.

Show The Pros And Cons Of A Specific Choice

Maybe your child wants to get a piercing, and rather than telling them, flat out, “no,” it's better to give them the positives and negatives of a specific faction choice like tattoos or piercings. This is especially true if they decide to go for a piercing somewhere that's not the ear or nose. Somewhere like the nipple is quite popular, but if you are concerned about the repercussions of this, you need to make sure they learn more about nipple piercing pain. If they are old enough, especially to make their own decisions, and you really are in disagreement, it's that age-old approach of giving your children all the positives and negatives, in the hope that they will make the right decision.

Give Them Inspiration

We have to remember that if we suggest something, our children will most likely go do the opposite. But what you can do is point them towards inspiring figures and style icons that they may want to emulate. There is nothing quite like a good Pinterest board to get you inspired. And no doubt they will have made their own at this point, but if you want them to pursue a certain style, give them more than their fair share of choices, but also more than their fair share of inspiration. Magazines, television shows, anything that can ignite their imagination.

Realize You Won't Always Win

We suggest something to our children, and they won't listen. It's part of being a parent that we have got to accept that we won't always win battles. If you want your children to make more informed choices in style, it's up to you to provide the ideas but let them form it themselves. Sometimes they make fashion choices that you cannot get on board with at all, but this means that, on occasion, you just need to bite your tongue.