...the corrections of discipline are the way to life,
keeping you from the immoral woman...
Proverbs 6:23b-24a
When my three girls were young, birthdays were a big deal in our house. We were always church mouse poor during those years, but we tried to be creative and do the best we could on the cheap. One year I had a joint party for my two girls whose birthdays are in December, and the collected guests and birthday girls had a wonderful time decorating gingerbread houses (made out of graham crackers). One year I made a huge butterfly cake. We had picnic birthdays, "at the park" birthdays, sleepover birthdays, and dress-up birthdays.
As the girls got older, it became more of a challenge to think of something that would interest adolescents, and then teenagers. I would look through magazines, talk to other mothers, and get the opinions of the birthday girl's siblings in order to come up with a celebration that they would enjoy. I must say, though, that one thing I never thought of - not in my wildest imagination - was hiring Chippendale dancers to amuse the guests at my daughter's birthday party. The thought would never have occured to me because such sexually explicit "entertainment" would be inappropriate for my own children, much less for their friends.
An upstate New York mother has been charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of a child after hiring adult strippers to perform at her son's 16th birthday party. The parents of five boys who attended the party (some as young as fourteen) discovered pictures of the adult-rated party on their kids' Facebook pages. Those parents took the photographs to the police, and the mother of the birthday boy was arrested. The district attorney who is prosecuting the case said, "...exposing the unsuspecting children to this sort of entertainment goes beyond the pale when it comes to shat is appropriate for a 14, 15, and 16 year old child." I couldn't agree more.
Raising children is a challenge - from babyhood to adulthood. There is a great deal that the world would like to introduce to your children that we as parents try to delay until our kids have gained as much maturity as possible. Providing your children with sexually explicit entertainment in your own home seems to indicate the lack of one parental element that is so necessary for guiding kids in today's world: good old common sense.
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