Does France Protect Their Girls better than we do? It appears so

The French Upper House of Parliament just voted to ban beauty pageants for girls younger than 16. The reason? Many are concerned that young girls are being hypersexualized and objectified. They protest public scripting and reinforcement that a girls’ worth comes largely from her looks- which by the way, aren’t the looks of children, but the looks of adult women stuck in children’s bodies. This is extraordinary for France considering the fact that they are the epicenter of fashion and that they take pride in being sexually “progressive” with peep shows located next to grocery stores and Starbucks cafes.

My hat’s off to them. How is it that we, who champion equality between the sexes and pour millions every year to educate our children’s minds, keep these ridiculous pageants alive? I think that I might have a clue. We think they’re entertaining, harmless and (as mothers of the tikes might say) a good way for girls to boost their self confidence. If these are entertaining, then shame on us. Many who watch Honey Boo Boo, I believe, do so because they think the show is funny. And others who tune in to Toddlers and Tiaras would protest that they think the contests are cute and just fun to watch. Let’s tease these arguments apart a bit.

First of all, is it morally acceptable to watch a small child on television in order to laugh at her? It’s one thing to laugh at an entertainer’s jokes, but I don’t think that’s why Honey Boo Boo is on television. As a parent, I would abhor millions of people laughing at my child. Second, the idea that we watch because the pageants are cute, harmless and entertaining. Who are we trying to kid? Every American adult with an IQ over 80 knows what television eventually does to female entertainers- they make them sexy. We just witnessed Miley Cyrus make a fool of herself with an obnoxious attempt to shock us old people by acting like a prostitute. Remember, when she was young, she was the cute Hannah Montana. She started out as a nice girl who wore age appropriate clothes. Over time, she decided she needed more attention.

Pageant girls start out at a more provocative level than Miley did. They wear frilly dresses (OK) and then cake their faces with their mothers’ makeup. They wear adult high heels and learn to walk like a sultry Vogue model. At least Miley got to wear jeans on television when she was 13. Not to look like a fuddy-dud, let’s track these pageant girls a year or two into their “careers.” The heels get higher, the walks more seductive, the clothes sexier and pretty soon, they learn that looking sexy gets more attention.

Child beauty pageants might look cute to the passing viewer, but make no mistake, once girls step onto the stage, they walk on a slippery slope with a gentle incline. Each girl will end up looking too old, too sexy and garner attention for both. She will quickly learn that attention makes her feel good and liked. So what will she do? Push the envelope just a bit more to attract more eyes so that she will feel even better about herself. And that is very, very sad.

When, America, are we going to get sick and tired of our obsession with sex- even to the point where it hurts our little girls? Are we so empty that we have resorted to finding the sexualization and objectification of little girls fun? Come on, let’s follow France just this once.

Halloween: Where Did Nice Sponge Bob Square Pants Go?

It’s here. That ghoulish-goblin, orange time of year. I have always loved fall because of the colors, the smells and because there is a reminder that God ordains change. Whether we like it or not, life appears, then it fades in beautiful glory before it reappears again after a long period of quiet.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Halloween is a part of the fall and here it is again. Costumes with warty cheeks, distorted mouths and goolish hair jump out at us in grocery store and drug store aisles. So, you who have young children, beware, even a trip to the store for paper towels can be frightening to little ones.

You and I have seen dramatic changes over the years in Halloween costume styles. Once upon a day we threw an old bed sheet over our children, cut out eyes, gave them a flash light and out into the neighborhood they went. No more. Costumes have become a source of anxiety for children if not parents. Young kids want to be the character that they want and if they can’t be him, well, they might just as well stay home. That’s easy enough to deal with, but when it comes to elementary school and middle school children, we need to be on our toes. Make a sweep down the costume aisle at any big chain store and you will find dresses adorned in black and red which even some pole dancers (maybe that’s an exaggeration) would be timid to wear. Yet, we actually consider buying these for Halloween for our young girls.

Feminist shake their fists because the costumes aren’t “gender neutral” and portray young girls as “too girlie” or as inferior to boys. Seriously? We’re going to argue about whether Spiderwoman should wear pink or black and red? Remember, people, Spiderwoman doesn’t really exist. But I am amazed that few men and women are insulted by highly sexually charge styles of our children’s costumes. Who cares if a girl looks too girlish, she shouldn’t look like a prostitute on Halloween (or any other time of the year.)

I strongly encourage you who are scouring the stores for Halloween costumes to make a few simple rules. First, you choose two or three costumes that you feel are acceptable for your kids and then let them pick one from those. That way, they get to have a choice, but you have control. Second, refuse to buy your girls sexy, skimpy, skanky clothes no matter how much they want them because their friends have them. Do you want other trick or treaters looking at your daughter as a sex object while she picks up her candy at the door? Don’t set her up for that. Third, remember that even though many boys act tough and want to wear ghastly, ghoulish masks and carry bloody heads with them, avoid these. Being goulish and being scary are two different things; so stick to scary. We forget that many boys are very sensitive and bloody stuff frightens them. I see many boys in middle school and junior high having sleep issues because of bad dreams from seeing too much violence.

Halloween can be a time when neighbors come out and chat with one another and kids run around in fun. But stay in charge. Keep a lid on sanity this Halloween particularly when it comes to costumes.

Warning: Oreos Under Attack

Nuts. Now researchers tell me that when I dunk my Oreos in milk, my brain acts just like I took a hit of cocaine. Seriously, now I can’t even love Oreos anymore? The ones with orange centers are my favorite; not because they taste any different than the white centered ones, but because they’re pretty.

A new study from Connecticut College revealed their findings on the effect of Oreos on rats’ brains. In one chamber, the rats were offered Oreos. In another chamber, they were given rice cakes. Even rats aren’t fools. They tore the Oreos apart and devoured the cream filled centers but wouldn’t even finish the rice cakes. Then the researchers gave the rats a shot of either morphine or cocaine in one chamber and then gave them a shot of saline in the other chamber. They observed that the rats who were given the drugs wanted to spend as much time in the chambers where they received the drugs as they did in the chambers where they received the Oreos. Thus, the researchers concluded, that the rats’ pleasure centers were stimulated as strongly by the cookies as they were by the drugs.

For those of us who crave chocolaty goodness, this might be bad news. While I am not ready to call my love for sweets akin to being addicted to cocaine, I get their point. High fat, high sugar, highly processed foods are bad for us. I knew that. But I do think that there’s something here that we can’t miss, as much as I’d like to dismiss it.

Very sweet fatty foods can become addictive. I am the first to admit that I am a sugar addict. As a young pediatric resident, I wore one of those long white coats so I could carry all of my necessary “tools” and keep my clothes clean. I learned early on that if I stuffed one of the huge white pockets with bit-o-honeys and fireballs, I could skip meals without starving. I didn’t want to, but I was so busy in the hospital that I frequently missed meals so I had to find a way to quiet my hunger. And candy worked. Unfortunately, those habits became very hard to stop. When I finished my training, I decided to break my sugar habit and found it very, very difficult. One time after I fasted from sugar for an entire week, I took my kids to buy school supplies at Staples. While in the store, I spotted a plastic bucket full of Swedish fish, ripped the thing open and downed the whole thing before check-out. My kids were mortified. Sugar addiction is real.

The second point is that high sugar, high fat foods trigger pleasure centers and can act to alter our moods short term. This can be real trouble for kids who are struggling with anything from school issues to family or friendship troubles. A spoonful of sugar indeed acts like a medicine to help their troubles go down- for a bit.

These two points are very important because while we think that cookies and sweets are “treats” for our kids, we must be very careful. A little is fine, but if you find that your child (or you) is constantly reaching for the Oreos, roll up your sleeves. There is work to be done and some serious sugar weaning may be in order. It’s hard to wean kids off of sugar but it’s very important because you don’t want to set your child up for a tough addiction that will only get harder to break. And- equally important, you want to make sure that your child learns to self soothe with other things beside sugar and fat. If you think your child may be addicted, I would go so far as to say, find out if he is eating to release some tension or frustration. Then, help him deal with it in other ways. Turning to sugar is easy, but it solves nothing and it will only make him heavier and more frustrated in the end.

Oreos are an iconic American kid-friendly food. So let’s respect the chocolate buggers and make sure that our kids (and we) dunk them in a healthier way.

Why We Hate Jesus

I dare you. The next time you have dinner with friends, enthusiastically tell them that God recently answered your prayers. (That is, if you are dining with atheists, agnostics or even Christians.) Most will look at you and nod in agreement or out of politeness. Some might even ask you to elaborate or offer an anecdote of their own. Friends will eat, laugh and the chatter carry on easily. Then, pick up the conversation again and mention that Jesus did something wonderful for you.

The room will go silent. You will feel shivers go up and down their spines and no one will know how to respond; for one good reason. Talking about God is almost socially acceptable, but say the name Jesus, and folks cringe. This phenomenon has always intrigued me. Why is it that speaking one name of the same deity is easy, but using His other name stops conversations dead? We know that this is biblical. After all, Jesus said himself that He will be a stumbling block. I get that. Those who love him will say that they try to follow his teachings, ask him for guidance and believe that it is through Him that we come to know the Father. To those who want access to God without reconciling the person of Jesus, this doesn’t sit well because when we keep God vague, He can be all things to all people. Or at least He can be what we want him to be. This is crucial to those with a faith who don’t want to deal with Jesus because it allows conversations to be smooth and friends to feel connected on a spiritual level no matter what their faith is. One can worship God who is part Buddhist, part Jew, part Hindu or part whatever a person sees Him to be. When God is this broad, those who worship different parts of Him can stay connected. There is no dissension or conflict and everyone can get along.

But believing that Jesus is God Himself becomes a game changer. If God is Jesus, He can’t be part anything other than Yahweh. He isn’t Allah, Buddha, Joseph Smith or anyone else. That puts us who say we are Christians in an entirely different camp and this makes us and others uncomfortable because then, at the dinner table, we must explain not only why we believe that the God whom we worship is the same person as Jesus, but it also makes us say that we don’t believe what they believe. Commonality in our spirituality goes out the window and suddenly we are at odds with them- our friends.

The fact that Christians follow a God who claims that He is still alive in the person of the Holy Spirit carves us out of the religious pack because no other faith believes this. Muhammad, Joseph Smith and Buddha are dead and as far as I can tell, they never came back to life. Hindus don’t have a living deity and those who follow the God who is all things to all people don’t believe that He came back from the dead either. He couldn’t have, they feel, because if He really did, then they are stuck confronting Jesus again.

The real dare for each of us is this: are we willing to stop conversations because we love the One who came to us, died for us and who pulled out the sword and said, “By believing in me you will appear different, a kind of freakish and foolish.” I don’t know about you, but even political correctness has eeked its way into my religious psyche and telling folks that the Christian faith is not like theirs is no fun. I want people to like me. But when I fail to speak Jesus’ name and use God instead, I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m fudging. So why do I (and other Christians) do this? Is it because we really don’t like Jesus that much, or that we’re embarrassed by him?

I don’t think so. I believe that the real problem stems from the fact that we really don’t like ourselves very much. Those who are secure, self confidant and at peace, speak their minds. They do so lovingly but they do it. Those of us who grapple down deep with who we really are find that we don’t want to say anything offensive lest we alienate our friends. Perhaps then, the reason that we hate saying the name Jesus has very little to do with him. It comes from our minds which have been so worked over by our culture to avoid doing, saying or thinking anything offensive that we have become genuine unadulterated cowards.

I don’t know about you, but this isn’t something I ever wanted to be so I intend to correct it. The next time I am tempted to say “God” I will say “Jesus” instead. Halted table talk can be OK with me. What about you?

Are You a Yeller?

Mom or Dad, Are You a Yeller? Better Bite that Tongue

Kids who are yelled at by their parents are more likely to have depression and behavior problems, a new study in Child Development finds. This is no surprise, so why do a study? I think we need studies like this so that academics can remind us parents to take our jobs seriously. I know that I do.

Words cut deeply- particularly the words that flow from a parent’s mouth to a child- whether that child is 6 or 66. We listen to what our parents say to us because this is how we figure out who we are. We are wired this way from birth. As young children we scour our parents’ faces to figure out if they like what we are wearing, if they think the picture we colored is good enough or if they like how fast we run on the soccer field. If they communicate that they like what they see, then we believe we are good. If they never pay attention or berate us, then we believe we are no good. That’s how simple life is for a child. Even as adults, we never stop listening to our parents, because we are connected to them by a need-based love.

So when a parent screams at a child, the pain cuts deeply. Some parenting experts say that kids don’t hear parents scream because they tune them out. I completely disagreed. Kids hear alright, they just pretend not to hear because they simply don’t know what to do with the hurt.

Parents yell at their kids for two reasons. First, do so in an attempt to get their kids to listen. If children are strong-willed, defiant or have bad attention issues and never listen, parents amp up the volume to make them hear. Since they feel that nothing else gets their kids’ attention, they resort to yelling. Second, many parents yell because they can’t control their own anger. When we are tired, irritated and overwhelmed, yelling comes easily. We don’t yell at coworkers, our boss or even other adults. We take it out on the easiest targets- kids who know they shouldn’t yell back. And that’s just not fair.

I frequently hear adults complain about how kids talk. Teenagers swear at school and berate their teachers to their faces. Even young children will mouth off at adults. I recently had a 15 year old girls from a private school come up to me after a lecture I gave and insist that I didn’t know what I was talking about. We all interface with rude kids frequently. They may not raise their voices, but they know how to use words to jab when they want to. So we need to do something about this.

We parents need to get hold of our tongues. When we say things like “you’re lazy, worthless or won’t amount to anything” to kids, they become mean and depressed. Some of us aren’t that blatant but cut our kids down in more subtle ways. We yell at them to do their chores, use a tone which communicates that we believe they’re lazy or maybe we swear at them. When it comes to being nasty, we can get mighty creative.

James tells us that if we get control of the way we talk, then we acquire control over our entire bodies. This is extraordinary. I love that he compares us to horses. Put a bit in their mouths and you control the whole beast. I know that I can be a beast.

He goes on to say in chapter 3: 5, “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body.”

Could it be that we can start fires in our children by saying mean things or yelling at them? I believe so. Words are that strong. And if that is true, so is the converse. If we are respectful, firm and kind to our kids, we can put fires out in their hearts. Could it be that many of the problems we experience with our kids stem from the way we talk to them? I think so.

So let’s listen to our pal James. This week try an experiment. Refuse to yell in your home- at your kids, your spouse or another loved one. Use only a respectful tone and refuse to say mean things to anyone in your family. Watch to see what happens to your kids’ moods- and to your’s as well. I bet you’ll be surprised.