There are so many things about Juicy Couture that worry me, I’m not sure where to begin. And I’m not the only one.

“My daughter is obsessed with Juicy. It drives me nuts,” a friend with three daughters told me. “I told her that I’m not buying her a thing. She’s 9, for God’s sake. Her grandparents can get it for her on her birthday. My other two girls aren’t that interested, but this one loves labels: Ugg boots, Juicy, whatever brand of jeans is the hottest that week. I expected this kind of pressure when she was 16, not 9.”

If your preteen daughter is going to get together with her friends, she might throw on her Juicy Couture denim capris. They’re available in sizes 2 through 14 for the bargain price of $109. Or maybe she’ll don a Juicy embroidered track suit for $181.

Children’s fashion is in bloom: There’s Roxy, True Religion, DKNY, Seven, Urchin, Diesel, Flowers by Zoe, and the ubiquitous Abercrombie. Remember when it was just the Gap, with a little Benetton to add to the mix?

My friend is not the only mother struggling with her daughter’s premature interest in fashion. Several mothers I spoke to complained that their daughters’ childhoods were being shortened because of their focus on their bodies and their clothes.

“There’s only so much you can do to protect your kids. I feel like my kids are being lured by advertisers everywhere they go. Television, magazines, billboards, clothing brands – they are all trying to grab my girls, and tell them that it’s time to start to pay attention to things that I didn’t even know about until I was in college,” a mother of two girls said.

At a recent visit to Lester’s, the fashion-forward emporium on Second Avenue, I could barely distinguish the children’s section from the women’s section. Everything looked flirty and sexy and sophisticated. There were several “hot mamas” picking up goods for their young children and for themselves. And there were teenagers floating about, too.

“The girls that come in here are way beyond their years,” a saleswoman told me. “They come in and try on clothes like it’s some after-school activity. And they buy, too. They have credit cards and they buy. They are polite and sweet, don’t get me wrong,” she added.

I spoke to two of those girls, both 14 years old, to see how they felt about the pressure to look a certain way and wear specific brands.

“Everyone notices what everyone else is wearing. And the cooler kids definitely have on cooler things,” an eighth-grader at a nearby private school, Liz, said. “Juicy, Diesel – they just look better.”

“I love shopping,” the second girl, Jackie, said. “But I am constantly fighting with my parents about how much money I spend on my clothes. It’s hard because I wanted a new pair of jeans a few months ago, Sevens, and they were almost $200. I drove them crazy and finally I got them. Now I really like them, but if I could, I’d love to have a different pair. I wouldn’t tell them that. They’d kill me.”

According to Teenage Research Unlimited, teenagers spent $159 billion last year. So it is no surprise that in our little town, several clothing stores cater exclusively to the teenage market. There’s Berkley Girl on Columbus Avenue; Chill, Foravi, and Yellow Rat Bastard (don’t ask) on Broadway in SoHo; Betwixt on West 10th Street; Tribeca Girls on Duane Street; Paul Frank on Mulberry Street, and Magic Windows Teen on Madison Avenue – just to name a few. Some of the stores offer Tootsie Pops and other candies for their shoppers as they browse through piles of T-shirts, jeans, sweats, and other staples.

“We simply can’t afford to buy the clothes that she wants,” a mother of an 11-year-old girl said. “When I was a teenager, I remember being frustrated because there was nothing to buy. The kids’ clothing was too babyish and the adult clothing was too grown up. Now there’s plenty to buy. We just don’t have the money for the labels she wants. And even though she’s quite devastated, I’m not so sure that’s such a bad thing.”