Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Depression and Britney

You may know from yesterday's news and from numerous bloggers that yesterday is considered (statistically) the most depression day of the year.

Now, as difficult as that may be (and believe me when I tell you that I know some people who are pretty depressed today), you COULD say that at least the most depressing day is over with and now, lets get on with the rest of the year. It's gotta get better, right?

Please, someone tell me it'll get better!

*****
I'm doing fine comparatively.
*****
Yesterday evening as I was putting coats on the girls in preparation for our weekly drive to our small group meeting, Sarah asked me what innocent meant.
I told her that it meant "you hadn't committed a crime" and asked her why she was asking.
She said she had heard the words "not that innocent" and wondered what it meant.
Well . . . I told her that those words in particular were part of a song that I didn't particularly like and didn't think she needed to be listening to. (I knew that there are times in the morning at daycare when I drop her off that the school-age girls are listening to Britney Spears on the CD player. I have spoken to the teacher about it before and it had stopped being a problem, but I might have to bring it up again.)
Sarah then wanted to know why she shouldn't listen to that song.
I told her that that song had a bad message for girls that I didn't want her to think about, that such messages encouraged girls to focus on how they looked, the clothes they wore, if boys liked them or not . . . stuff that wasn't as important as trying to be nice to other people, trying to learn as much as you can and be kind to others.
I am sure that I oversimplified things a bit, but I hope she understood. I told her that I loved her mom NOT because of her clothes, or how pretty she might be, but because she was smart, kind, good to others.
That is the kind of girl I want her to be.

1 comment:

lulu said...

Isn't it fun to try to explain this kind of stuff to little children? It's surprising how often we need to 'parent on the fly' to deal with questions and situations that we really can't prepare for.

At Stevie's old day care, I had a different song problem. The gal was playing "soothing" Michael Bolton music while those poor kids were trying to NAP! Here's this dying buffalo belting out, and my kid is being subjected to it.

Big surprise--I am the bad influence more often than not. If I had a nickel for every time I said "I'm sorry. Mommy shouldn't have said that" or "Don't repeat that at school", I could fund Stevie's Harvard education. Example: I let Stevie watch "School of Rock", which has some cussing but Stevie doesn't cuss so what the hell? But in one scene Jack Black sings to his class "math is a wonderful thing, math is a really great thing, so get off your ATH let's do some MATH . . . " Stevie cracked up, and it's become a running joke around our house. Just don't say it at school!

But I wouldn't let my daughter listen to Britney either, for so many reasons.