Many expat families may already have remembered to buy something nice for Mother’s Day in the UK last weekend, but you can get a second bite at the cherry today as the UAE and Arab world celebrate the special day. And although many of us pay only lip service to dear old mum on the day, author Deborah Tannen urges daughters especially to think about the special bond they have.

Research has shown that adult women who get on with their mothers are less anxious and depressed, and have higher self-esteem than those who don’t.

Deborah wrote the book ‘You’re Wearing That? Understanding Mothers and Daughters In Conversation’. And she explains:

“Mothers and daughters are brought face to face with reflections of themselves, and that forces them to confront who they are, who they want to be and how they relate to others.

Quite simply, if we didn’t love our mothers so much, they wouldn’t have the power to hurt us. If she didn’t love us so much, she wouldn’t notice our every fault and want to improve it.”

It should come as no surprise that this relationship so often runs into trouble.

The mother-daughter relationship provides the child with her first experience of feeling secure in the world, says family counsellor Stephanie Palin of Relate - and that’s often the root of the problem.

As a daughter grows up she wants to continue to please this person who provides this support.

However, as Palin explains, this can turn many girls into approval seekers who end up making the wrong decisions, all because they want to please Mummy.

Although a mother may see her supportive role as benign, the pressure exerted on the daughter can be very intense, and lead to situations where the daughter feels ‘she can’t do anything right’.

Palin says: “I remember coming home with my first senior school report with a 99 per cent on my maths, and my mother said ‘What happened to the other one per cent?’

“It was never, ‘Well aren’t you clever’ or, ‘Well done’. I quickly learnt that if she said, ‘How did your friend do?’, the subtle message was that I could have done better.”

This so-called ‘tough love’ approach can explain the reason why many mothers and daughters seem to have such differing views over their bond.

Clinical psychiatrist Dr Victoria Lukats believes it’s often jealously which leads mothers to push daughters too hard.

“There’s your daughter, this beautiful creature with her whole life ahead of her and all these opportunities to take on, but you’re at a later stage where the doors have already closed.

“As a mother, this is your opportunity to live through her, to help her realise her own potential and get her to stand on her own two feet.

But you might find that you’re doing all that by consistently nagging about how she’s not doing it right.”

Some mums feel rejected by the fact that their baby daughter is growing up. They lose a sense of self as the mother and can consequently find it hard to treat their daughter as an equal.

“Mum will always want you to be the little girl she looks after,” says Palin. “She’ll always want you to be dependent on her and need her.

But she has to accept that you are now a woman in your own equal right, that you have your own decisions and life. Your mother is a flawed human being, just as you and your friends are flawed.

You put up with your friends’ flaws because, ‘That’s just how Jane is’ - but you don’t give that leeway to your mum.

Understanding why she does things the way she does, and that she did the best she could despite her flaws, is essential to you having a healthy relationship with her.”