Teach the Children

Some of my dear and respected friends shared a post yesterday from a mother of several teenage boys who was counseling young girls to be careful about what images they post online or she would delete them from her sons’ accounts.  While her intent was commendable in some ways, many agreed the execution was a bit off (there were images of her boys flexing in bathing suits within her own post).  But the more I think about it today, I feel it speaks to an ongoing and unsettling slant in society to continue to hold girls responsible for all teens’ “inappropriate” behaviors.

Since Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke’s performance at the VMAs, social media has been bubbling with discussions of young women and “appropriate” attire or behaviors.  While I personally found the act distasteful and frankly not entertaining, I’ve been disappointed at the direction of most of the discourse.  The focus has been entirely on Miley Cyrus and her choices, with little discussion of Robin Thicke’s participation or that of the network executives who clearly approved (and likely engineered) the performance.

Thankfully, some have recognized the discrepancy.  And I’m even more relieved to see men speaking out on this issue.  First Eric Clapp spoke out about how we need to be talking to our sons about this incident, not just our daughters.  And this morning I was thrilled to see another man, Nate Pyle, share how he intends to discuss with his son how to view women.  He is eloquent and direct:

“It is a woman’s responsibility to dress herself in the morning.  It is your responsibility to look at her like a human being regardless of what she is wearing.”

THIS is what I wish that mother was teaching her sons.  That regardless of how a women dresses, regardless of whether she posts that picture to her Facebook profile, she is a PERSON worthy of respect as a human being.  All young women explore their sexuality.  All young women are going to make mistakes.  Certainly we should try to educate our daughters to bypass the pitfalls of social media.  Certainly we need to coach our daughters on modesty and respecting themselves.  But with equal certainty we need to teach our sons that the value of a woman has nothing to do with the clothes she chooses to wear.  And that they don’t need to cut out of their lives any woman who wears something revealing for fear they can’t control themselves.

NOTE:  Please do read the posts by these wonderful men, it is so important.

Wouldn’t this be fun?!

I’m so intrigued with this new venture by former Creative Mama Jessica Cudzilo!

Define School from Jeff Manion on Vimeo.

Finished!

I completed my 365 project!  I missed 2 days, but I was pretty thrilled with that.  I decided that I would substitute in an image for those days, so there were still 365 images in my project.

I was relieved to be finished, convinced that was IT for me.  A break was in order.  Maybe a smaller project to keep me shooting for me.  Then I decided to make a video as many of my friends had done.  (be ready, it over 6 minutes long)

Then it was all over.  But I kept shooting.  Swearing it was not a 365 (or 366 as this leap year will be).  But it has been 7 days now.  I don’t seem to be stopping.  I think I will make it another year.  There will probably be a few more missed days than last year.  But I’m pretty sure I’ll be making a video again next January.

Hair-raising Discovery

On the way to meet the biggest at the bus stop yesterday I made a little discovery.

The sweet part was that nearly half of it was made from our dog’s hair (I brush her outside).

Who knew that bark-y beast could be so useful?

Page One

Suddenly, the twins have discovered singing.  Miss Peaches adores one particular song/story that she learned at school from an Eric Carle book.  It is a repetitive narrative (aren’t all children’s stories?) about a string of animals and what they see, starting with a baby bear.

“Baby bear, baby bear what do you see?  I see a red fox looking at me …”  and so on.  Miss Peaches can string together about 6-10 animals like this.

Yesterday in the car Mr. Plum decided to join in.

“Baby bear, baby bear, baby bear, baby bear, baby bear,”  all at the top of his very big lungs.

“Mr. Plum,” I asked, “what do they ask the baby bear?”

“Oh Mom,” he said, “that’s on the NEXT page.”

I got more than a T-shirt

The weather was better, and worse than last year.  It was warmer, but there was a lot more rain.  But I didn’t mind, cause it was raining money for my cause.  This year, thanks to fabulous family and friends, we raised $1257 by the time of the March for Babies walk (and there were even a couple late donations that pushed us further).

I’ll be honest, it was a crazy weekend, and once we realized that we were likely to get soaked it was hard to be excited for walking around a baseball track.  But then when you get there, you see the other families — some with babies or toddlers, others with T-shirt in memorium.  And we remember why we do this…

because we want more families to have the happy outcome we did.

Thanks you so much to everyone who donated this year, it means more than you could ever know.