The past few weeks, I've been contemplating many things about mothering daughters. It gets a little overwhelming, because, well, I've never raised girls before. :) This is all new to me. I was raised in a relatively protected environment, for which I am becoming increasingly grateful for, because as I consider all my "options" with how to raise my girls, I wish I could just go to a place where I didn't have to worry about the outside influences that my girls are going to have.
My thoughts on all this began on the night of the VMA awards. We all know about Miley Cyrus' performance and how mortified we were/are over it. Here was this beautiful country girl who used to love the simple life, turned into some sort of "out there" sex object. Miley is 20, I believe and so she's not far away from still being all the teenage girls idol. I, for one, used to love her Disney show, "Hannah Montana." It was clean, silly, funny and for the most part, good. (in my opinion at least.) She has now morphed into a young woman wanting to "be herself" and show the world that it's ok to let all the humanness out. Alright, I'm not all into this "religious" stuff where everyone has to be perfect at all times. The reason being is we are all human and there is just no way we are going to be perfect. We can strive our very best to be just like Jesus, and walk in His steps, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, we are going to fail and our human side is going to come out. But when it comes to just letting ourselves go and not worrying about how our actions are affecting others, or ourselves for that matter, I just don't agree with that.
There are so many things to consider, think about and pray about when it comes to raising children.
My ultimate goal is to raise them to want to love Jesus, to want to follow Him and be pure, holy and set aside as God's servants. Here are a few of the things I've been thinking about:
1. How do I want my girls to dress?
2. When to talk to my girls about the birds and bees?
3. How should I encourage them to have holy, pure relationships with boys?
4. How do I protect them from all the influences of the world, yet not be overly protective?
5. What is "too much" when it comes to encouraging "good behavior"?
Ok, those are just a few that I think about. I'm on a lot of mommy pages on FB and I am constantly reading different questions moms ask, "should I put my daughter on birth control," "should I make my daughter clean her room," "my husband isn't religious, but I am, so should I make my kids go to church" and on and on and on.
Of course, we all have opinions on issues and we should all do what we feel is best for our children. But yesterday, I saw on FB (we've all seen this before, most likely, as it seems to becoming a trend amongst parents) a picture of this young, 13 year old girl holding a sign.
I believe this sign says something like, "I was disrespectful to my parents by twerking at the school dance." (or something like that!!....don't go quoting me...but that is the gist of what was said). We all know that this young girl got the "twerking" dance from Miley Cyrus a few weeks ago. While I understand what this mom was trying to get across to her daughter, I don't feel it is right to humiliate your child. I've seen it happen over and over; a child gets humiliated, then they become more and more withdrawn, stubborn, angry, violent and at times, even suicidal. Humiliation, for me and my children, is just not the way to raise them. But what is sad is that this girl probably thought she was "cool" and most likely was trying to be in the "in crowd" since everyone (literally millions) is talking about Miley Cryus' twerking dance. If she did it, then she'd be popular, just like Miley, right? What is so wrong with that? What is wrong with having a role model to look up to?
My first response was, "well, that mom just shouldn't have let her daughter view what Miley had done." Then my thoughts went a little deeper. Can we really protect our children from things like this? This world is nuts. And impure influences are everywhere. If we send our children to school, they're going to get it there. If we take them to the store, they're going to see it on the magazine racks and in the aisles. If we take them to the zoo, they're going to see women dressed scantily and if we take them to a waterpark, they're going to see a lot more than we ever wish. Can we honestly protect them from that, without causing them to be overly protected? Maybe that mom could have sat down with her daughter, immediately after Miley's performance and talked with her about the dance. Maybe she could have told her daughter why she feels it wasn't clean, wholesome, pure and then back it up with scripture. Maybe she could find her daughter role models that are good to look up to and be like and then show her the difference.
You can't make your child's choices for them. But leading them in the right way, and showing them the reason for those good choices will influence their hearts and minds. When they see that "twerking" dance, instead of wanting to be like that, their hearts will go out to the person doing it and want to pray for them. Their hearts will be to show their friends it's ok to not follow the mainstream and that it's actually cool to do so!
I know I sorta bounced around with a lot of different things here...hopefully I didn't completely confuse you, or loose you in the rabbit trails of my thoughts.
Blessings~
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