What’s in A Name?
The only difference between a knight and a peasant is the clothes they’re wearing.“ This is a line taken from Robin Hood. Try telling this to your teen who may think that it’s the clothes they wear that get them noticed when it’s actually the way they carry themselves in any clothes that makes the real difference. 
If your teen seems to “need” the latest look in an effort to hang with the “in crowd”, give them a challenge, ask them to set the trend to buy clothes within their budget and still be cool. The library card wasn’t cool until Arthur Fonzerelli “The Fonze” got one on Happy Days. They say library card registrations increased exponentially the next day. Apparently no one was really reading until Oprah went and started a book club and asked everyone to read along with her. Give your teen that same challenge. It really isn’t about clothes, it’s about being confident enough to be who you are.
It is their comfort with who they are that makes them cool. There is no difference between them and the kids who can afford those clothes except that the kids who can afford those clothes know they can afford them and your teen, who possibly can’t, stresses about wearing what will put them in the same light as those teens. Those teens don’t have that stress. If your teen mimicked the no stress part instead of the out of budget clothing part, they would be the same teens.
Besides the bigger secret is that those teens even with those clothes are not as secure as your teen thinks they are. They can be in such turmoil over their self discovery, what they want to do with their lives, or if people like them for who they are rather than what they wear. All these things complicate how that teen develops, but your teen does not see this.
There is no difference between the teen who can afford name brand and the teen who cannot. Your teen needs to know this and stop using the clothes as an excuse for why they’re not popular. People gravitate towards positive people. Being negative about themselves is a bigger turn off than the name on a person’s clothes. Again, I ask you to dare your teen to be confident in all they have going for them rather than focusing on the one thing they may not be able to have. They may end up discovering a whole new way of living that will keep them living within their budget for the rest of their lives.
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