kendall, when my daughter entered Junior High, after a couple of weeks, she started frequenting the Sally Ann for the overlarge, gender neutral, clothes and took up the skateboard and bass guitar with a passion.

I got a little concerned with the dress until she said to me one day, "Mom, I don't want to grow up yet, I still want to be a kid".

The clothes eventually changed towards the last year of highschool, she eventually gave up the skateboard, won a rarely awarded gold medal for her bass playing in the Coastal Jazz Festival, (and still plays bass in an alternative/punk band by the way), found her way to the Honour Roll and eventually found her way to the opposite sex, but in her own time.

What you might have missed kendall, by being a couple of years older than me, (I straddled both youth cultures, the Greaser and Hippy) was that the Hippie generation's clothes culture, really brought home to us that what you see is not necessarily what you get.

Youth has been doing this since the time of the Romans and Greeks. It is a necessary part of human development.