by Elizabeth Blankenship

Created on: April 24, 2008

Shopping with my preteen daughter can be miserable. My opinion about what is appropriate to wear, vastly differs from her opinion. I had been tossing around ideas about how I could make our clothes shopping trips a better experience for the both of us. The last few times we have shopped together have been very tiring, expensive, and not much fun because we can not agree on what my daughter should be wearing.

As a single mother, trips out have become fewer and far between because of rising gas prices, rising food prices, and the everyday nickel and diming my meager purse experiences on a monthly basis. So one night as I lay in bed pondering my daughter's need for a few new outfits, it came to me.

My daughter loves math and she recently had learned about graphing and charting in her elementary math class. I began churning an idea of how I could cave into her whimsy for some totally inappropriate fru fru whatever outfit/item but not have it look like I had caved in. I know myself well enough to know that I would cave in.

I believe that most children thrive when they are given respect, nurturing, structure, gentle guidance, and it always feels better when a person is allowed to make choices rather than dictated to. Yet I know that I have X amount of money and that there are certain items my daughter needs and many more that she wants. I always am trying to balance our wants and needs.

My daughter and I spent a few hours going through her clothes. We made piles of clothing that still fit, did not fit and must be given to The Salvation Army, stained or worn out clothing that could not be donated. I was glad that we had taken the time before we went out shopping because she had more outfits than I thought and we decided together that some things would work well with other items creating a few more outfits to get us through for a little longer.

When we finally were done sorting my daughter's clothes, we sat down at the table and we each made a list of items we both thought my daughter needed and then I asked my daughter to make a wish list. Surprisingly, my daughter's wish list was far shorter than I thought it would be. We then matched the items on both of our lists and compromised on a few of the other items.

We then brainstormed and estimated(which is another math skill my daughter was working on in her third grade math class) how much each of the new clothing items would cost. My daughter decided to make a bar graph. Her bar graph depicted how many pairs of pants

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