Advice: The big "talk"
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Advice: The big "talk"
| Sun, 02-18-2007 - 7:28am |
Okay, I need advice on when people started or will start to have the big "talk" with their kids.
My oldest is going to be 9 next week. I have some friends telling me they already had this talk with their children at this age. She just seems so young to me. She still plays house, school and dolls with her little sister. IMO, telling her about sex is going to take some innocence away from her. But, am I sheltering her too much?
She knows about periods and body hair development. She already has little breats "bumps" (as she likes to call "em).
Agghhh..I really thought I had until she was 12 to have this talk like my mother did.
What is everyone's opinion?

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No, I meant that it could be bad taste OR simply not caring. I was agreeing you.
I understand that you find it anal and ridiculous to ban barbie sneakers from a child's life. So be it.
As far as caring, I have already explained that I care what my own kid wears, not really what other kids wear. However, I do notice what other kid wear.
"Have you never been to a place popular with young girls and seen some dressed inappropriately? That's what I mean by inappropriate, nothing more complicated than that."
I'm sorry, but that doesn't really clarify anything, anymore than declaring that "most of us know this when we see it on a young girl". Many, many girls, teens and women wear relatively short to somewhat cropped t-shirts in summer where I live. Even in many work environments, it's extremely common to see a few inches of bare midriff on hot days. It's not considered either inappropriate or sexually provocative, though I suspect you would consider it to be both. Who is right?
" I'm wearing a black, low cut party dress with very little back. It has sequins on top and fringes at the hem. I'll be appropriately dressed, but if my dd14 wore it, she might not be. Simple, imo. "
If you or your teen were attending church, it probably wouldn't be appropriate for either one of you. If your teen were attending a formal dance party, I'm not sure why it would automatically be inappropriate for her to wear a party dress that would appropriate for you. It only seems simple to you because you are convinced that there are some universal standards of sexy attire that we all agree to.
"But I see no reason to not allow Barbie shoes, or a ballerina costume, or a Dora t-shirt, as long as I'm conscious enough to dress her nicely for occasions that call for it. "
Not sild, but I have to admit that I have always avoided items like Barbie shoes or Dora t-shirts. I don't really think of them as tacky or inappropriate, I've seen some really adorable stuff from Dora or Blue's Clues etc. lines. Some of it would even be perfectly fine for more formal occasions. it's more that I prefer not to be (or have my children) used for advertising more than I can help it. An LV bag may be absolutely gorgeous and exactly what I've always looked for, but if it's got the "LV" stamped all over it I'm not buying. I try to avoid clothing that have the company name stamped everywhere, and I avoid all character clothing as well. It is a personal quirk and I don't cringe or find it tacky when other kids wear such clothing.
Well, the subthread has been about that but also about kids dressing older than their age, which together with being dressed wrong for an activity is another way of being inappropriately dressed, right?
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The heels could be a problem in more ways than one.
You know, I don't think it's complicated just because it might be hard to express. You poked holes in the definitions I provided, but I could do the same for yours. And yet for those of us who sometimes find kids dressed inappropriately, we usually can tell what we think is inappropriate about it, whether it's a matter of not being dressed right for an activity, or of being dressed wrong for their age, or whatever.
Maybe where you live you just don't have as much in the way of girls wanting to dress older than their age. But here, I find it's somewhat of a problem. I even have to talk to my own girls about it sometimes, and their schools definitely have policies, procedures, and so on, because they find it problematic, too.
I think the problem is that "tacky" for some of us shades over into "inappropriate", and "inappropriate" shades over into "neglectful if parents have something to say about it". And that's not actually always the case, is it?
Another dimension is the various meanings of "inappropriate". In connection with kids, we think of things like "inappropriate content" in movies and so on. But in the broader sense, it can mean just bad taste, like wearing a short party dress when a gown is what others are wearing, things like that.
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