Posted on 01/24/2006 2:50:39 PM PST by SmoothTalker
You are cracking me up! I know you can't possibly take yourself this seriously.
This lively banter has definitely been more entertainment than I could have expected on a Friday afternoon.
You are cracking me up! I know you can't possibly take yourself this seriously.
That's what you think...
Seriously though, are you going to stick to banter with my original post or are you now just biding my time with garbage?
If this is what you're going to post, I'm done--I have much better things to do.
Let me help you here: The word you are looking for is "No".
I have a 10-year-old daughter. I retain veto power over what she watches, which clothes she buys and what she can do on the Internet.
She wanted pierced ears because "All the other girls have them!" I told her "no".
If she wants to buy "sexy clothes" because "all the other girls wear them!" I tell her "no".
Will her self-esteem suffer horribly because she doesn't conform to the mistaken notions of a bunch of other children? Hardly.In fact the opposite. She will learn the very real power of standing up for what you believe in, even when everyone else is against you. You can't buy that.
I'm not a prude, what she does when she's 18 is up to her. But if I don't try to instill the appropriate values into her, who will?
Hey, have a nice day.
You really need to get out more.
LOL! He isn't lucky enough to live in Las Vegas...maybe in his area, Katherine Harris is the standard of sexiness! ;)
God's blessings to you for doing your best. Most parents find it easy to control their ten year olds though, so I will say to you that the words you may soon be looking for are: "Oh my God, I can't believe she's doing........
You will find that you cannot control what your daughter watches on TV or the interent, and for many reasons. You cannot babysit them 24/7, they will be at their friends' homes and will watch TV, (not that the average "family" show isn't borderline pornographic anyway). They will go to the public library and have access to porn book, and yes, even porn internet sites.
The other major problem is that so many families don't have the luxury of having two parents anymore, and the ones that do don't typically have the luxury of stay-at-home mothers. No matter how much you may think you're 'protecting' your child from pornography just take a look around you and you'll see that it's on the side of your local Public Transportation busses, it's on billboards, it's in every window display at the malls, it's in Teen Magazines, it's in your family newspaper, it's even being TAUGHT in schools under the guise of "sex education". Oh, and you better add Major League Baseball to your banned TV list of programs, because your ten year old will learn all about Viagra and the dangers of four hour erections if she watches it.
Anyway, thanks for the "no" advice, and good luck as your daughter gets older. Keep up the good work.
I'm not a stay-at-home mother, I'm a divorced father.
The question is not whether children are "exposed" to modern culture (which they are, obviously), but what their attitude toward it should be.
You can't protect children from the outside world forever. The best you can do is prepare them for it.
I have tried to be open and honest with my daughter in the hopes that when she does have questions about what she has seen or heard that she can come to me knowing that I will give her a truthful answer. So far she has.
This means that I don't treat pornography as something "immoral" or "forbidden" (which would simply make it more interesting for her, not less, and which would reinforce the ideas of her peers that I'm somehow a "square" or a "prude"), rather I treat it as boring, degrading and shallow, and something that I choose not watch. I reinforce this by emphasizing that what is important about a person is what is inside, not what is outside. Hence the prohibition on pierced ears and sexy clothes (to be honest, I could care less whether or not she has pierced ears, but the argument that "everyone else has them" means an immediate "NO!" in my book. That's never a reason for doing anything, and until she can come up a better one, the answer will always be "no".).
In other words, you're lying to her about the way you really feel. Why not tell her that pornography is immoral and disgusting, and that the human body is sacred? Tell her it's displeasing to God and is sinful, it often becomes addictive and destructive, it keeps the mind in the gutter, stimulates the base senses, is degrading to females, makes young males think of girls as 'meat', and has always been illegal in America until our country lost its values, and is just plain wrong and evil.
Anyway, good luck with raising your daughter, I can tell you're a good dad. I wish you both the very best, and may God be with you both.
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