I have a friend who writes me from time to time regarding something she read on this here Blog. She was so brilliant, you have to read what she said. Names changed to protect the innocent :
I went to read about the trees but got more riled up on the other - just had to comment - girls dancing sex - yes, it is wrong and stupid and pointless - too many parents sex up their kids before they are ready or before it is useful - what is the point? In real practical life, such behavior is to lure in a mate for reproductive purposes. yet, parents of grade schoolers drive their kids to 'dates' to movies and the mall on weekends and dress them up at ridiculous expense for junior high dances and allow them to watch waaaaaay toooooo much MTV (as in any) and to spend hours with their friends learning the moves and allow them to wear sexy clothing. If we want our kids to go to college and marry after that, at say, 22, why make then start dating at 12? Does it take 10 years of sexual taunting and being taunted to find a mate? Or should that 10 years be spent on education and learning to socialize and practicing at being friends with lots of people and managing life? With a good background in all that, it outta take a couple years or even just a few MONTHS at most to pin down a spouse.
They let their kids start this in grade school and ramp it up in Jr. High then a few years later they worry that they will have pregnant teens and same actually do and sneak the pregnant 13 year old off for a secret abortion over the weekend and are shocked to find that 13, 14, year olds are having oral sex with each other - they got the anti-preggo message but also got the sex is really really cool message - how can this be good for minds and egos and emotions that are developing? How can it be good for a kid trying to develop a sense of self and self-esteem to have sex mixed into the boil?
At our elementary school, we had a 'talent show' - most of it was lip syncing to rap and way too mature pop music with dancing in inappropriate attire - one was a high school girl with her elementary age sister in denim hot pants twitching, well, never mind, but 'cute' that the girl and her teen sister are involved together in it but what sort of mom allows THAT innuendo laden crap to go on? Would have been just a cute in jeans and proper dance moves. But they HAD to have been practicing in the home in mom's presence for weeks!!
I have been ranting about this for years. Once when Joe was out of town, and Bobby was going to play his bowed psaltery (as in high pitched harp - folk music) and his mountain dulcimer and his friends who were talented sisters playing at a high school level in 3rd and 5th grades on violin and cello and piano, I asked a friend to go with me. I had forgotten about the hideous tone of the event as we had been focused household wise on the folk and classical stuff, and I was so embarrassed I mean REALLY REALLY embarrassed to and for and with my friend - and of course they had saved the best for last so Bobby was in the last few acts and the talented girls were dead last so we had to sit through - during the sleazy acts I just kept looking for the parents of the girls and there they'd be sitting, beaming as though the, well never mind, -twitching was somehow an accomplishment. I just don't get it.
And then, at the high school fund raiser pancake breakfast where we go to hear my fiddle player son play violin in orchestra, the next act is a coed dance troupe and the girls are wearing mesh tops over midriff baring job bras and hip hugger knit pants and thank goodness my delicate teen son was busy hogging down his post performance free pancakes or I would have had to drop him to the floor and cover his eyes.
School sanctioned extra-curricular group. Hip swaying and more with bare bellies covered (suggestively?) in mesh? Breast shimmying? Arms pressing cleavage together?? DANCE????
Why? I must be a fuddy duddy too, because, as liberal as I am, I still think it is wrong. If it looks like sex to us, it is and it is inappropriate for children. And they are still children.
The other side effect is that it deteriorates the parent child relationship. Kids naturally need to break away and rebel at some point, and if a parent has given in to this crap and even encourages it and then suddenly balks when the kids appears to maybe actually be DOING IT, that sends an inconsistent message that the kids turns into the parent being a dork and there goes the respect. Parents need to be consistent and cannot call it cute at some age then try later to correct the mistake!! And caving in to the everyone is doing it mentality also undermines any respectful parent-child relationship.
My kids may not be perfect, but I have stood ground on violence and TV and such and its been worth it. They are not prudes, as we listen to sexually explicit Rolling Stones lyrics that they understand the context of and they understand that it is an adult song about things adults in relationships do and are NOT hip twitching in rhythm to it.
Jeeze, I worry, and as much as I worry about this, I worry about the violence more, because these kids on their video games practice killing and torturing and destroying every day over and over and at some point, when I am drooling in a nursing home, they will be making decisions about my well-being and a system of kids with such a cavalier attitude cannot be moderated by a few sane ones such as mine. I worry . . .
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