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3 Ways to Help Your Daughter Understand & Withstand Media Influences
129013 years
Messages embedded in song lyrics, video imagery, and advertising influence the ways girls think about themselves and their relationships with others. You can help your daughters–and other young girls–become aware of media messages that violate values and degrade girls, using these engaging conversations and activities: (more…)
Bullying at Summer Camp: 5 Ways Parents Can Help Kids Cope
108113 years
Marlo Thomas and Dr. Joel Haber, author of Bullyproof Your Child for Life: Protect Your Child from Teasing, Taunting and Bullying for Good, offer these 5 tips for helping young people cope with bullying during the not-always-carefree days of summer:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlo-thomas/summer-camp-bullying_b_885536.html
The Healthy Media for Youth Act
100513 years
According to Change.org:
- More than half of girls (55 percent) admit they diet to lose weight
- 42 percent of girls know someone their age who forced themselves to throw up after eating
- 37 percent know someone who has been diagnosed with an eating disorder
- 31 percent admit to starving themselves or refusing to eat as a strategy to lose weight.
According to the Girls Inc, even young girls, 3rd through 5th grade, worry about their appearance (54 percent), and specifically their weight (37 percent).
The American Psychological Association’s Report on the Sexualization of Girls (2007) found that three of the most common (more…)
Formspring: Enabling the Cruelest Form of Bullying with the Greatest of Ease.
48314 years
Having just read the post below, I am still speechless…which is fine because this Mama said it all so well:
http://www.rachelsimmons.com/2011/06/guest-blog-a-mothers-battle-to-get-her-daughter-off-formspring/
I adore her apt description: Formspring is the present-day version of the bathroom stall on steroids, enabling the cruelest form of bullying with the greatest of ease.
Are you aware of the website Formspring? As the mother of 8 and 5-year old girls, I was not…yet…but am so glad to know about it early so that I can do a little early intervention and hopefully prevention.
You know, it’s crazy–I feel like me, and so many other parents and professionals out there, are putting their hearts and souls into helping girls cope with bullying–then a site like this comes along and makes money hand over first with no purpose or objective other than to wreck young girls. Where is the conscience?
ParentCentral.Net: A Great Online Resource for Parents
014 years
In 1998, professionals from KidsPeace National Centers founded TeenCentral.net, a unique website designed as a safe place for teens to share their personal stories and receive feedback from peers as well as professional counselors. In the last decade, this award-winning site has responded to hundreds of thousands of stories and provided timely guidance to teens via its anonymous, free platform.
In response to increasing feedback from adults who have shared their parenting challenges and struggles, the founders of TeenCentral recently created ParentCentral.net. ParentCentral is designed to allow parents and caregivers the opportunity to post (more…)
5 Dangers of Too Sexy, Too Soon Ads Aimed at Our Girls
22414 years
The other day, I was having one of my proud Mama moments, introducing my soon-to-be eight year-old too New Moon Girls.com and talking to her about why I valued the type of self-esteem building content on this type of site over the self-image crushing messages of many other popular girl-focused websites.
For the first five minutes, I had her rapt attention and eager interest! Then, too suddenly, she saw the part on the site about “Create Your Own Avatar.” The first thing she wanted to do: skip the hand-drawn Avatar selections available on New Moon Girls and click over to Barbie.com to download one of their images.
Seriously?!
Think in your mind of how Barbies are built…now multiply whatever you have in mind by less clothing, smaller waists, higher heels, and more makeup. Now, you know what the site has to offer in terms of the avatar choices it presents to young girl users.
The irony. My best laid plans jilted!
Of course…I know…there is a great learning moment here for my daughter…an impactful conversation to be had…but WOW did it strike me in the face what an uphill battle we Moms face in providing our daughters with quality media content and fortifying them from the ubiquitous messages of thinner, sexier, smaller online, in print, and on TV.
5 Dangers of Too Sexy, Too Soon Ads Aimed at Our Girls.
This is a great article written by child expert, Dr. Michele Borba, on the subject, including helpful advice for parents on how to buck the prolific negative images aimed at young girls.
My Baby Clothes Boutique has partnered with me to provide articles to the parenting community. Check out their site the next time you need adorable baby clothes, photo perfect baby headbands, or even just a cute baby hat for Spring. They have everything you need!
>It’s Not What You Say, It’s How You Type It!
015 years
>Experts say that 7 percent of human communication comes from words, while 38 percent is from a person’s tone of the voice and a whopping 55 percent comes from his body language. I’m no math wiz, but those numbers tell me that when a passive aggressive person wants to mask his anger, sending an e-mail, text, or posting online can be the perfect way to do it! In a face-to-face or live telephone interaction, body language and tone of voice betray anger and hostility. When these interpersonal elements are absent, it is easy to mask a whole lot of hidden anger.
The Perfect Crime
- Have you ever received an e-mail from a boss or co-worker that was completely professionally appropriate, yet simmering with hostility?
- Has anyone ever Facebooked you with an embarrasing comment for all of your FB friends to read…couched in justifiable language (“What? It was only a joke! Don’t be so sensitive”)?
- Did you ever send a text brief enough to deny that any real thought went into it but long enough to tell a person what you are really thinking about her?
- How often have you held your breathe after dialing a phone number, hoping you’ll get an answering machine that will allow you to leave the real message you would never leave in person?
When you receive a message that you KNOW was intended to insult you…and you know that the sender KNOWS he was intending to insult you, and he KNOWS THAT YOU KNOW…but you can’t prove it just from his words…you’ve been the victim of the perfect passive aggressive crime!
Please share your stories of passive aggression in e-mails, texts, voice mails, online, etc here!