5 Conversations: Don’t be in Such a Hurry to Grow Up

My daughter, Kaylee, and I have been reading 5 Conversations You Must Have With Your Daughter by Vicki Courtney. Visit the author’s amazing blog here. Kaylee gets up early and reads to me for thirty minutes every morning. It’s slow going, because we often stop every-other paragraph and discuss what we’ve read or I clarify what we just read.

We just finished the first conversation, “You are more than the sum of your parts,” which dealt specifically with body image and how society is destroying children’s and teenager’s and even adult’s concept of a good, healthy body.

We have now moved on to conversation number two, “Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up.”

This is talking about girls acting like girls instead of women, and about the different damaging parenting styles that allow and/or encourage little girls to act, dress, and behave like grown women. We started this conversation in the beginning of this week, and I just happened to get a catalog in the mail the same time we started the conversation that just had me floored.

Do you see anything wrong with these Halloween costumes?

They are intentionally designed to look like hookers, sexy, even Playboy “bunnies” style. These costumes, the shoes, the poses are all designed to sell sex. On the website of the costume catalog, the section in which these costumes are found is called “sexy adult.”

So, unless you have a problem with adults trying to sell sex, many people would say that, no, there isn’t a real problem with these outfits. I could launch into a diatribe about sex in the culture and how it’s a Biblically proven destroyer of all things good, but I’ll refrain from that for now to show you this:

WHEN did it become fun, entertaining, acceptable to dress our daughters like hookers, sex objects, or “Playboy bunnies?”

These costumes are sold in three sizes: children’s 6-8, 10-12, and 14-16. Seriously?

Here is one that fell under the classification of “teen” and is in my daughter’s size:

I want to dig deep and discover that I’m overreacting, but I’m afraid that just simply isn’t the case here.

The closer Kaylee gets to the tender age of 13, the more I have to fight an impulse to wrap her up and run away, run a self-sustaining farm in the mountains of Kentucky with my husband and my children and hide away from the world.

Unfortunately, that isn’t God’s purpose for our family. So we must stand and face the world, despite what’s going to get thrown at us. One of the ways we’re doing this is by reading this book together and discussing the Biblical principals behind it.

Kaylee has never been ignorant of what she’ll have to face. Sometimes it surprises me what she knows and I’m thankful that we are taking this time together to discuss so many issues on such a deep, respectful, and prayerful manner – that we’re facing these issues head on before they become controlling factors in our lives.

Doing what we call our “devotion time” does nothing but encourage her to stand on her faith and proclaim that it’s okay that she’s 12. And it’s okay that she isn’t allowed to dress like a sex object for Halloween. And it’s even okay to say that it’s wrong that people would allow their children to dress like a sex object for Halloween – for whatever warped motivating factor that parent may have.

I have been incredibly encouraged by the response I got with the first article I posted on this subject. Many many friends purchased the book ready to read it and shore their daughter’s up for the future. If you haven’t done so, I’d like to encourage it again. Read this book and discuss it with your daughters. Read this book TO your daughters. It can only be a blessing for you to do so.

Hallee

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