Unfortunately, this is the attitude of most people today.    When did it become “okay” to accept the fact that teens are going to be having sex rather than expecting them to wait until marriage? When did it become “okay” to be a pregnant teen in school rather than it being a stigma? Maybe we should have been making “much ado” about these things a long time ago and we wouldn’t see the rise in sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy today.

Now, we are to accept this movie where the main character becomes pregnant through a sperm donor as a “sign of changing times”, states Aniston.  Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the teenagers I know to believe that this is where our world is going! 

It’s time we go back to teaching our children that they can say “no”, remain pure until marriage and save having and raising children within the context of a marriage.  Let’s start making “much ado” about teaching abstinence and really parenting our children.  

(http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/723522-196/condom-distribution-draws-apology.html)

Making a movie about this awful book shows how threatened Hollywood is by the abstinence world-view.  How many of you have read this book?  A sex education teacher makes fun of the abstinence-until-marriage folks.  So many times people take something good and distort it – which is what the author of this book has done.  Abstinence-until-marriage should be the standard as it is both physically and emotionally healthier.  Yet for decades, Hollywood has tried to push a liberal world-view onto generations of people.  Actors become role models for our youth.  People fall for it and begin to justify their actions.  Here we are today with a push for an anything goes society.

This liberal ‘anything goes’ world-view has lead to depression, high suicide rates, increase in STDs and teen pregnancy, alcoholism, drug abuse, emotional brokenness and death. 

Well, there is something that we can do.  Don’t buy into it.  Refuse to see these movies or watch these TV shows that promote this liberal world-view.  Teach your children to value high standards and have dignity.  Let’s push back. 

Movieguide reported recently how surprised Hollywood was when big blockbuster movies did not take in the projected ticket sales and in contrast family movies like Toy Story and Karate Kid far exceeded expected sales.  Let’s continue this trend.  Demand more family movies.  Write to TV stations and tell them to raise the bar in their programming.

I heard a teen recently say “MTV treats us like we are dogs in heat, but we have news for them – we are not.”  Let’s give our children better than MTV.  We are not desperate housewives. 

Keep in mind though representatives of Planned Parenthood in Corpus Christi think that Kindergarten is a good time to start sex education.

Seriously, PP claimed in their flyer that they are going to “encourage abstinence.” http://www.prolifewaco.com/uploads/NobodysFoolFlyer2010.pdf

Right.  Who are they kidding?  Planned Parenthood supported numerous bills in 2009 that would have destroyed abstinence teaching in Texas and would have banned Texas from receiving federal funds for abstinence teaching.  Click here. http://www.educationworkstexas.org/policy.html

This sham of an event created quite the controversy in Waco/Central Texas, as common sense Texans that support Texas values are helping expose the deception of Planned Parenthood.

Source:  TexasLegislativeUpdate.com

 
“Parents in Helena are right to be upset about these proposed sex courses in their schools. Sex education is a value-laden subject, and information must be conveyed to each child at a level consistent with his or her mental maturity. Supporters of such classroom programs typically talk about presenting material that is ‘age-appropriate.’ But that criterion does not apply in this context.
 
“Because children mature at widely differing rates, one child may be ready for a great deal of information at 11 years of age or earlier, while another child, even in the same family, might not be ready for the same information until he or she is 14-years-old.
 
“School classrooms group children by the same chronological age, but they will each be at varying stages of mental maturity. In fact, the lower the grade level, the greater the disparity is among the children. It is impossible to design a classroom sex education course that is appropriate for all of the children in the class.
 
“As Dr. Melvin Anchell has pointed out for decades, the consequences of teaching sex education in elementary school are harmful and far-ranging. By introducing the subject of sex during this period of a child’s maturity process, we interfere with his natural learning abilities and his development of social qualities such as compassion.
 
“The children who are unfortunate enough to be thrust into this kind of curriculum will suffer in countless ways, both academically and socially.
 
“American Life League encourages parents in Helena to continue to oppose these programs and demand that their public schools stop these social engineering schemes and instead use teachers’ limited and valuable time to return to teaching basic academic subjects.”
 

It Doesn’t Work?  Spend More Money!

Pregnancy rates in the U.S. had been on the rise until 1993. From 1993 to 2006, pregnancy rates began to decline. In 2006, for the first time in 14 years pregnancy rates have begun going up.

• 1993 (the year the decline began) was the first year public schools introduced abstinence programs.
• In 2006 (the year the rates began to go up), the ACLU threatened lawsuits for discrimination against school districts whose sex education programs standard was “abstinence-until-marriage.”

Here’s how your tax money for sex education was spent.

• Title V began in 1994. It is currently funded at $50 million a year. This federal program gives a block of money for Abstinence Based Education to states who match every $4 with $3 from their own budget.
• Since 2006, school districts in states who accepted this money have been the target of lawsuits by the ACLU, so only about 30 states currently accept the funds.
• Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) allowed individual abstinence programs to receive federal grants without requiring the state to match funds. CBAE was defunded in 2009 by the Obama Administration.
• When all the abstinence education (ASE) money was added up in 2008, it totaled $176 million.
• When all the “comprehensive” sex education (CSE) money was added up it came to $609 million plus $27 Billion for HIV prevention programs.

Here’s the kicker: NONE of the new money can go toward Abstinence Education. Every penny of it has to go toward a “comprehensive” approach. (In government-speak that means you say abstinence is effective, but your main focus is getting teens to use condoms. Most comprehensive sex ed. programs discuss condoms over abstinence at a ratio of 7:1.)

Now, this is the REALLY funny part. TWO well-documented reports have been published showing comprehensive sex ed programs DON’T WORK!

The first was conducted by John Jemmott, PhD and published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. It showed that in head-to-head measurements, only 33% of students who received abstinence based education were sexually active 2 years later compared to 50% of students who received comprehensive sex ed (abstinence plus condoms message), “safe sex” education (condoms only) and the control group (health information with no extra emphasis on sexuality).

This study marks the first time ASE and CSE programs were evaluated side-by-side, with the same at-risk population. It came as a surprise to some people who promoted handing out all that CSE money for the last 3 decades.

The other report came from the Institute for Research and Evaluation. Unlike every other evaluator of sex education, IRE doesn’t have a dog in this hunt. They don’t create or sell sex education programs. They just look at the evidence of what they produce.

Their evaluations, over several years, in head-to-head comparisons found that:

• The CSE programs touted as “effective in reducing teen pregnancy and STDs” didn’t actually MEASURE pregnancy or infection rates at all.
• NONE of them increased consistent condom use or had an effect on delaying sexual initiation over time.
• But several studies have shown that ASE programs (the ones that just had their funding cut) are proven to be effective at delaying sexual initiation.

Remember CSE gets $609 million dollars a year vs. ASE which got $176 million per year. The programs which cost taxpayers LESS money, and are MORE effective have been eliminated. The programs which HAVEN’T worked for the last 30 years, and cost taxpayers MORE are about to get an additional $100 million dollars.

Yep, reminds you of President Regan’s old saying:

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

Source:  Positively In Control.com

School Superintendent Beth Singer has apologized for what she calls a “misunderstanding” over the district’s sex education policy.  However, in the beginning of this controversy, she was quoted defending the policy by saying, “The intent is to protect kids”.  Perhaps Superintendent Singer should take a look at the real truth about the effectiveness of condoms.

1. Condoms are not considered effective protection against some STD’s, especially those that spread by skin to skin contact.
2. Studies have shown that with typical use condoms have an actual failure rate of almost 15%. 
3. Condoms do not protect against all pregnancies.

Parents need to give their children the right tool.  The term “safe sex” should never be associated with condoms.  The right tool to give our children to save themselves from STD’s and unplanned pregnancies is abstinence; abstinence works every time.

By CHARLES A. DONOVAN / The Heritage Foundation

Parents can find plenty of dismaying news in the latest government reports on the risky behavior and attitudes of American youth. A recent finding that one of every five teenagers has taken prescription drugs without a doctor’s order, for instance, drew appropriate attention.

But the trends in risky business on the younger side of 20 aren’t all bleak. Take this one: In any given three months, the vast majority of younger teens refrain from having sex.

The school-based Youth Behavior Risk Survey found that 65 percent of high school students said they didn’t engage in sexual intercourse over the previous three months. The National Survey of Family Growth, a more comprehensive study that includes 19-year-olds, put this “abstinent majority” at 70 percent.

If either number is higher than you expected, it’s probably because misleading cultural messages persist about sex and teenagers. In the 1990s, Fox Entertainment did its best to persuade U.S. television viewers that all teens live at an address in the neighborhood of “Beverly Hills 90210″ - and behave accordingly. MTV and VH1 contributed to the image of adolescence as a hive of continuous sexual experimentation.

There’s media gold in those Hollywood Hills, and always will be. In fact, though, teen sexual activity declined significantly over the past two decades. Besides increased abstinence, reasons include a steady, statistically significant reduction in the percentage of teens with multiple sexual partners. More partners, of course, put them at greater risk of sexually transmitted infections as well as pregnancy.

Consider the percentage of never-married teenagers who say they haven’t had sexual intercourse. For 2006-2008, the most recent period studied, the National Survey of Family Growth found that 58 percent of never-married females age 15-19 had not had sex even once. That represents a 20 percent increase since 1988 in premarital abstinence for girls. As for teen males: A higher percentage report sexual experience, but the boys show a 16 percent increase in abstinence.

Digging a little deeper uncovers other reasons to believe American teens have established a real beachhead for sexual abstinence. Among never-married girls who are sexually experienced, more than 25 percent say they haven’t had sex in three months. Among never-married boys, close to a third say the same. The circumstances are relevant too. The National Survey of Family Growth asked sexually experienced teens if they didn’t want sex when it was initiated, had mixed feelings, or welcomed it. More than half of the girls said they either didn’t want sex or had mixed feelings. So did more than 40 percent of the boys. As certain as night follows day, some teenagers resemble the comic characters in the movie “Superbad” in their obsession with ending a sexual drought. Just as clearly, others drank from this well of experience and awoke with serious hangovers.

Young people, who generally struggle with identity and “belonging” issues, are eager for meaningful human connections. It’s not just hormones. Young men and women are more than the sum of molecular attractions. They’re traveling the hazardous road between childhood comforts and adult expectations. The validation they think they could get from another person through sexual contact makes it a risk that seems worth taking.

But no “fake ID” can admit a teenage boy or girl to genuine adulthood.

That’s why society’s response to teen sexuality as merely a medical or public health phenomenon is incomplete. The abstinent alternative, in turn, must be about far more than temporarily saying “no” to sex. It must be about the transition into adult responsibilities, adult joys and, ultimately, adult character.

Earlier this year, University of Pennsylvania researchers released a model study showing that abstinence programs can be effective. The study randomly assigned some middle-school students to an eight-hour abstinence curriculum and others to sex-ed programs that included contraceptives and mixed messages. Penn researchers found that the abstinence-only offering reduced subsequent sexual activity by one-third more than other programs.

Personal relationships with teens can accomplish even more. Teen Talk, an abstinence program at Milwaukee’s Family House founded by Cordelia Taylor, a registered nurse, has had great success in a city that once had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. Of 170 participating girls, only two became pregnant. And those two spoke with authority when they returned to counsel peers on avoiding similar mistakes.

The continuing task is to help the abstinent majority stay that way as long as possible, ideally until marriage. With four of every 10 babies being born to single mothers, primarily because of a surge among 20-somethings in births outside marriage, that task is more urgent than ever. We can press on with the knowledge that an abstinent majority is looking for more encouragement, and better examples, from the adults around them.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Charles A. Donovan is a senior research fellow in the DeVos Center on Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation. Readers may write to the author in care of The Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, D.C. 20002; Web site: www.heritage.org. Information about Heritage’s funding may be found at http://www.heritage.org/about/reports.cfm.

Source:  The Bellingham Herald.com

We have all heard stories about pedophiles using the social networks to communicate with and lure unsuspecting children and teens.  Now it appears they are using another online source to advance their agenda.

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia at your fingertips.  However, according to a report by FoxNews.com, it is now being used by a loose worldwide network of pedophiles to spin this popular online encyclopedia in their favor.  They are linking messages board posts to specific Wikipedia articles that the participants say need to be edited to “normalize” pedophile behavior in the public eye and to recruit more pedophiles into their community.

“Pedophiles have campaigned to push their point of view that ‘pedophilia is OK and doesn’t hurt children’ on Wikipedia,” stated Xavier Von Erck, director of the online pedophile watchdog organization Perverted Justice Foundation and Wikisposure.com.

How many of our children use this popular online encyclopedia and could unknowingly follow a link to some of this material?  How many people struggling with pornography could be lured into the world of the pedophila after reading these articles?

All of us must remain vigilant as to what is happening around us and continue to monitor our children’s computer activity. 

Source:  FoxNews.com

  ^{http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/06/25/exclusive-pedophiles-find-home-on-wikipedia/}

Check it out here:

http://links.mail-family.org/servlet/MailView?ms=MzA0MjE2MwS2&r=MjQzNjUxMzMyMQS2&j=OTI0MTM1NjAS1&mt=1&rt=0 

Parents are outraged after young teenagers were instructed on graphic sexual acts during a Planned Parenthood sex education class at the local high school in Shenandoah, Iowa.

“It was horribly inappropriate,” Colleen Dostal told Fox News Radio. “To do that in a mixed-gender classroom, — I truly believe it was inappropriate.”

Dostal’s 14-year-old son was one of a handful of eighth graders in the class. The students, she said, were given instruction on how to perform female exams and the instructor used a 3-D, anatomically correct male sex organ to explain how to use a condom.

But Dostal said she was most upset over the instructor simulating sexual acts using stuffed animals designed to resemble STD’s.

“I do not understand why any adult with a classroom of children would show them sexual positions,” she told Fox News Radio. “I think that’s horribly inappropriate.”

As for the photographs, “I believe some of those photos were pornographic,” she said.

“Had we known this was going on, I would have sat in the classroom or I would have pulled him out,” Dostal said.

She took her concerns to the principal, who Dostal said was “mortified.” The principal apologized but several other parents decided to take the issue to the school superintendent.

“I understand it’s a state law that sex education be taught but it is also state mandated that parents be told that this is going to happen and we were not told.”

Superintendent Dick Profit told the World Herald he received an equal number of calls supporting and opposing the Planned Parenthood presentation.

“It’s a political hot potato; it’s a religious hot potato; it’s a parental hot potato,” he told the newspaper. “It’s all of these things that cause a crack in the system between society, parents and schools, and we’re still required to do it.”

Planned Parenthood’s Jennifer Horner defended the class and said some of the material had been turned around. 

“We are not trying to keep any of this a secret,” Horner told the newspaper. “All information we use is medically accurate and science based.”

Profit said next year parents and guardians will receive advanced warning about the class.
But that may not satisfy parents like Scott Gray, whose 16-year-old son was in the class.

“As far as we were concerned, it wasn’t sex ed, it was sex demonstration,” he told the World Herald

Source:  FoxNews.Com

1. Marriage is the most significant relationship in your life. There are stories of people being married 70 and 80 years. This is a lifetime! Your spouse will be the most important person in your life. You must choose wisely and treat that relationship (even if it hasn’t started yet) with respect. Your future spouse will value this.
2. The time between now and your marriage is relatively short compared to the rest of your life. Abstinence shows your willingness to exercise self-control and good judgment.
3. Sex in a relationship creates an artificial intimacy that exposes you to being hurt. It implies respect, honesty, trust and caring but it delivers none of it.
4. Saving sex for marriage frees your marriage from thoughts and experiences with other people
5. Saving sex for marriage allows your spouse to be totally free from thoughts and experiences of you with other people
6. By saving sex for marriage, you make the statement that sex is special and that your spouse will never have to worry about you looking outside your marriage for sex. That creates a stronger bond and more intimacy that you can ever know outside of marriage
7. Abstinence will help you become the right girl for the right guy. The right guy is happy to wait. He is not looking for a quick squeeze. He is looking for someone who will instill good values in his children. Anyone who would not respect your decision in this area will not respect your decisions in other areas.
8. Zero chance of pregnancy and being forced into stressful and life changing decision making
9. Zero chance of contracting curable venereal diseases and pubic parasites
10. Zero chance of contracting incurable viruses such as HPV, herpes and AIDs
11. Exclusive dating is not a commitment. A commitment is a contract before God and society that establishes a bond for life and that you are in all things - good or bad - together.
12. Marriage includes many difficulties and crises including pregnancy, child-rearing, work stress, money problems, and ageing parents. Sex during dating can take on importance so far beyond its actual impact during the most important relationship in your life. Sex also diverts time and emotion away from the most important part of dating: getting to know one another and objectively evaluating the other’s suitability for a continued relationship.

The drive to reproduce is very strong. It is important to develop a plan to help you in sticky situations. Some of the keys to keeping your commitment to yourself are to find people who support your values, to brainstorm on nonphysical ways to show love and affection, to willingly share your values with others and to avoid situations which might prove to be tempting.

Even if you have engaged in sexuality in the past, it’s never too late to revise your position. When you communicate your new sexual code of behavior to people in your life, expect varied reactions from derision and ridicule to new found respect. Your true friends will support you. The most important thing to remember is that you are starting to respect yourself and your future. When the right person comes along and the time is right, you will know that sexuality within the context of your marriage is a precious gift you can share with one another.

Source:  bestarticle.org

http://billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=2626#5

A new Government Accountability Office report calculated how much federal money six pro-abortion groups spent from 2002 to 2009. The figure — more than $1 billion — is astounding. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Even the GAO acknowledged their own $1 billion figure “may understate the actual amount of federal funds the selected organizations and their affiliates spent.” The figure doesn’t even include state and local funding or money given to one entity and passed on to another.

You can read the full report for yourself. The six groups reviewed were:

• International Planned Parenthood Federation: $93.8 million
• Planned Parenthood Federation of America : $657.1 million
• Population Council of the United States: $284.3 million
• Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States: $1.6 million
• Advocates for Youth: $8.7 Million
• Guttmacher Institute: $12.7 Million

Theoretically, these groups cannot directly spend federal dollars on elective abortions. In practicality, the money still supports their work in promoting abortion — freeing up other resources to keep the death mills churning. (You might say: we’re paying the rent, so they can pay the abortionists.) These are huge subsidies, and without them the abortion industry could not be as effective in its deadly practice as it is today.

But Americans have made it very clear that we do not want our tax dollars to fund the slaughter of unborn babies. So stop sending our money to the groups that promote and perform them! That’s what the proposed Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act (H.R. 614) would do, and with 93 bipartisan co-sponsors behind the bill, we’re hopeful it will garner enough attention to succeed. Please let your U.S. Representative know you support the legislation. I, for one, can think of about a billion reasons to vote “yes.”

Source:  Life Issues Institute

Sadly, the rates are increasing.

However, Mr. Halbert’s elation over the proposed shift in federal funding seems to have skipped over some very important facts. He claims that “after more than 10 years of exclusively financing programs to teach teenagers that “abstinence until marriage” is the only method to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection, Congress has provided $114.5-million for programs that have already been proven effective or that show promise of innovation.”

Even during the heyday of the Bush administration’s abstinence program, comprehensive sex-education programs were running in parallel and were much better funded. The words “exclusive” and “only” are a poor fit for describing the Bush abstinence programs. The Department of Health and Human Services has shown that for every $1 spent on abstinence programs, $4 was spent on comprehensive sex education.

One might surmise that a program that was well funded and “proven effective” would have produced a decline or at least a leveling in teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, but just the opposite is taking place (i.e., the rates are rising).

The advocates for comprehensive sex education are quick to claim that abstinence programs don’t work; but they, as well as the news media, have a tendency to overlook the increasing body of published evidence that shows otherwise. They were shocked in February when results of a new study appeared in a prestigious American Medical Association journal showing that abstinence education works.

Even the most authoritative advocate of teenage sexual education would have to admit that the only program that has been proven 100 percent effective has been one of total abstinence. All other programs have shown varying degrees of success, and many are outright failures.

Given the uncertain outcomes and the heavy societal costs of the existing comprehensive sex-education programs, it would seem foolish to abandon any program that has shown as much promise as has been demonstrated by the abstinence programs.

James E. Budde
Kansas City, Mo.

Source:  Letter to the Editor – The Chronicle for Philanthropy.com

The con­clu­sion of the recent CDC report show­ing the finan­cial and soci­etal bur­den stem­ming from teen sex­ual activ­ity should have been no sur­prise to any­one. As a prac­tic­ing ob/gyn, I see the adverse con­se­quences of sex­ual activ­ity out­side of mar­riage on a daily basis.

I once sat and counted 100 con­sec­u­tive patients who pre­sented to my office for appoint­ments. Had they all avoided sex until mar­riage, only 40 of them would have needed appoint­ments. The other 60 were being seen for preg­nancy and were not mar­ried or were being seen for the phys­i­cal and/or emo­tional con­se­quences of sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted dis­eases and bro­ken rela­tion­ships.

The ben­e­fits of absti­nence are unde­ni­able. One does not need to be a Chris­t­ian to under­stand that the absti­nent teen who waits until mar­riage will never get an STD and will never become preg­nant out of wedlock.

Absti­nence has other ben­e­fits, as well. A recent sur­vey of sex­ual sat­is­fac­tion in Amer­ica showed that the most sex­u­ally sat­is­fied Amer­i­cans were mar­ried Chris­tians. Another study shows that the divorce rate among Chris­tians who were vir­gins on the day of their wed­ding is only 3 per­cent. Sex­u­ally activ­ity in ado­les­cents is an inde­pen­dent risk fac­tor for depres­sion and attempted sui­cide. These teens are two to three times as likely to have depres­sion and three to seven times as likely to attempt sui­cide when com­pared to absti­nent teens.

The last four decades of “com­pre­hen­sive sex edu­ca­tion’’ and “values-neutral edu­ca­tion’’ have been a dis­mal fail­ure. The CDC report doc­u­ments that STDs remain as a prob­lem among teens, and Ten­nessee is 10th in the nation in terms of teen preg­nancy. A recent study shows that even those com­pre­hen­sive pro­grams that reduce unpro­tected sex and delay onset of sex­ual behav­ior have very short-lived effects, and their impact does not extend beyond six months.

Don’t teach bad behaviors

A study pub­lished in the Archives of Pedi­atric and Ado­les­cent Med­i­cine fol­lowed 662 African-American mid­dle school stu­dents from four pub­lic schools. The study eval­u­ated the stu­dents over a three-year period and com­pared an abstinence-only pro­gram with a pro­gram that taught only safe sex and a pro­gram that taught both. The abstinence-only pro­gram also cov­ered STDs, and only 33 per­cent of the stu­dents in that pro­gram became sex­u­ally active dur­ing the study.

About 52 per­cent of the stu­dents in the safe-sex arm of the study became active, and 42 per­cent of the com­bined group became active.

Inter­est­ingly, the abstinence-only cur­ricu­lum also did not reduce con­dom use in those teens who chose to be active. Many crit­ics have claimed that abstinence-only pro­grams reduce con­dom use among those stu­dents who are active. Other stud­ies con­cur with these findings.

Our schools are com­mit­ted to edu­cat­ing stu­dents about the dan­gers of cig­a­rettes, alco­hol and drugs. A myr­iad of pro­grams exist to show teens the con­se­quences of these behav­iors. To my knowl­edge, none of these pro­grams teach stu­dents how to inhale cig­a­rette smoke “safely.’’ None teach teens how to pace alco­hol con­sump­tion in order to keep their blood-alcohol lev­els below 0.8. They don’t teach stu­dents how to roll a joint prop­erly or how to shoot up with clean nee­dles. Such pro­grams focus on avoid­ing such behav­iors alto­gether, as they should.

It is time we rec­og­nize that the pub­lic health prin­ci­ple of pri­mary pre­ven­tion — risk avoid­ance instead of risk reduc­tion — should apply to sex education.

C. Brent Boles, M.D., is a mem­ber of the Chris­t­ian Med­ical and Den­tal Asso­ci­a­tion, is in pri­vate prac­tice in Murfrees­boro, and is the chief of ob/gyn at Mid­dle Ten­nessee Med­ical Cen­ter. He is also the Affil­i­ate Res­i­dency Pro­gram Direc­tor for the depart­ment of ob/gyn at the Meharry School of Medicine.

Souce:   Tennessean.com

Happy meets Crazy - http://cherylthoughts.blogspot.com/

The mother of this little girl stated in an interview that the spoof on Lady Gaga’s video Telephone, “suited my daughter’s personality; she’s energetic, playful, and outgoing.  She wasn’t under stress but comfortable with the director since she has known him since she was 6-months-old.  It was for fun; just for our family and friends.  I had no idea it would go viral and be such a hit.”

 Okay, I take exception with most of this. 

1.  No matter how animated your three-year-old child might be, I don’t think one day she decides today is the day she is going to have fun getting in and out of risqué costumes, applying tons of makeup, donning handcuffs and wigs, playing like she’s sucking a bottle and sharing it with a grown up, dancing on a bar, have scantily-clad grown dancers gyrate in the background, and everything else that appears in this video.  This all goes a great deal beyond a little girl “playing dress-up” as the director stated was what Keira liked to do for fun.

2.  Secondly, how many people spend three hours making an elaborate video just for family and friends?  I’m sure, though it wasn’t mentioned, there were some costs associated with the costumes, extra dancers (unless they were dubbed in), etc.  I can’t imagine that this was posted without the idea that it would get hit after hit and go viral.  Asked why they didn’t take it down, “It’s too late,” said the mother. “It’s on all kinds of videos. It’s beyond YouTube.”  Exactly my point!

Again, how can you do this and not fear for the physical safety of your child?  How can you do this and not worry about emotional flashbacks for your child – not today but at sometime in the future.  Is it just another parent looking at life as if it is a “reality show” and they are immune from any type of consequences?   

People have to start realizing that “fun” can turn into tragedy and children should be allowed to just be children.

At the time the warning went out, the police department did not have anyone under investigation but they had heard enough rumors from students about such activity in their area that they felt it warranted putting out the information.  One parent and one male student complained to the district that the subsequent media coverage had “tarnished” the reputation of the older boys.

I wonder if these parents or the male student happened to have a pre-teen daughter or sister.  If there was even the slightest evidence that this was happening, wouldn’t they want to know so they could protect loved ones?  As a representative of the department said, “I’d much prefer to err on the side of caution.”

All of us are aware that most middle-school girls would feel flattered by the attention of an older boy.  Many of them wouldn’t think that they were the object of a Facebook predator intending to do them harm and would gladly accept the invitation.  Unfortunately, this is yet another example of today’s culture.

 A school district in the area posted a list of the following tips for parents:

• If your kids are going to a party, call ahead to ensure parental supervision at the party.
• Don’t allow your kids to use the family computer in private.
• Be aware of their Facebook contacts and the content of that contact
• Educate kids on the risks involved in drinking underage and the lack of judgment that goes along with be intoxicated.

 Great advice for parents to share with their children!

Source: News1130.com; CANWEST News Service; TheProvince.com