OP , you’ve said ‘The kid is … interesting’ and ‘she’s fussy as fuck’ and
’we Compromised’
Your child is well on the way to becoming a young adult.
‘Black smart trousers’ , sounds like an office of part time working mums circa 2000.
In future, it would be so respectful and rewarding for you both if you Let her decide her clothes, especially for something like a carol service for a church and religion you have no interest in.
when we don’t let our kids have autonomy we are showing them that we don’t trust them to make their own decisions.
we need to show we respect our kids and that we believe they are capable of making sensible choices.
Not allowing them this freedom where appropriate is setting them up to have little confidence in their own decisions, which can impact their confidence and self belief.
Sometimes they need a safe opportunity to maybe make a mistake and hopefully learn from it.
in this scenario what she wanted to wear wouldn’t have been a mistake.
I have been the child who was forced to wear the clothes my mum chose for me right up until I left home (very prematurely). It was not good being the Amish looking kid against my will, if I’d chosen that look myself it would have been different .
i tried to be the opposite with my kids up to a point, I wanted them to fit in where I couldn’t.
I learned very early on that making them wear certain things for certain occasions made them unhappy and we did compromise sometimes but I’m talking about them being half the age of your teenage girl.
on the whole i learned early to choose my battles and that everyone is a lot happier when they’re comfortable in their clothes, often my kids would choose to be different from their peers and I sometimes worried about that.
they soon assimilated in high school and I never discouraged it because I know how important it is for kids to feel like they fit with their crew.
most school aged kids have no choice about what they wear five days a week for 39 weeks of the year, often including evening and weekend if they’re doing extra curricular activities so it’s no biggie for me to let them wear what they like for the rest of the time.
no matter what we feel about ‘sheep’ or running with the herd, most humans are pack animals and one of the ways we find our herd , pack or tribe is by the way we look.
most kids at school have very distinct groups and looks which help to mark them out as part of one group or another.
I’m sure you have your ‘look’ @EatYourDamnPie such as your aforementioned Santa skirt or trakkies, which helps other people find you when they have similar taste to yours, it’s one of the ways we bond.
perhaps this choir experience will help you to understand that your daughter is growing up and is a very short time away from leaving school, becoming eligible to vote and all the things that mark us as adults.
You can use this to help show you’re realising she’s not a little girl anymore and perhaps it is time to get some new clothes for her to feel proud of and earmark some to be smarter for occasions, but her idea of smarter, not her mum’s idea.