This is an article for all you parents out there. This is written to let you know that you are not alone and that this hair raising phase of your cute little child's life will pass. The time to look out for this phase is about one year into high school. The first year is always daunting and they are finding their feet. The second year they are seasoned high schoolers with the newbies in a lower year that look up to them.

This is when the transition is most likely to occur.

They are beginning to feel that little bit of power with the younger children below them at school, yet they are not quite grown up enough to fit in with the really cool kids. They are beginning to establish slightly more independence from the apron strings and are quite desperate to show some individualism.

And so it begins. You chubby cheeked tweenager (the child between childhood and adolescents) goes to bed with neatly combed hair and flannelette pyjamas, exuding that cute touch of attitude that you put down to his age. The next morning he gets up showing defiance when you encourage him to comb his hair.

Within a few weeks, you will notice that he is more and more reluctant to wash and then to wear anything but black. Smiles are a rarity and his lack of venturing outdoors leads to the pallor of the dead.

If your child has such thing as a paper round or Saturday job, then your ability to have much say over this clothing is limited. On one of their trips out with other such children who all, in their quest to be individuals, look the same, he will buy himself what he calls 'goth clothing'.

To you and I, it looks like something that came from a Victorian jumble sale but they pay good money for this trend. Goth clothing has been around for years but mostly in underground London clubs where people didn't mind their weirdness. Now, with the 'anything goes' attitude of today's society, goth clothing has become a trend that many youths like to follow. It's extreme and different and gives them a whole society that they feel they belong to.

Of course, there is room for a little genuine individualism within the genre of goth clothing. To typify it, trousers are normally black for male or females. They will probably be looser than your average emo black trousers which are skin tight and this is one of the biggest differences between the two groups.

Tops will normally be black. Sometimes they will have designer pictures on the front and very often this will depict scenes of death, skulls or some other such hideous thing. This is to reflect their feeling of otherworldliness that accompanies the goth culture.

Footwear will be, well, have a guess. Yes that's right. Footwear will be black. This can be anything from trainers to large, goth boots that resemble moon boots covered in metal wear. However, by and large, any footwear can pass the goth test as long as it's black.

For those parents with young boys who have turned 'goth', think yourself lucky you don't have a girl. Victorian style boned bodices, fingerless gloves and wild hairstyles with the typical goth whiteness accompanied with heavy black eye make-up will be what you see everyday from now until the point when they realise that, actually yes, they look like everyone else.