As I was random blogging, I hit BuckeyeBlog first.  I enjoyed her most recent post, but was reading a few of her other posts, when I saw the one Socially Retarded...by God's Grace .  She was talking as a mother of girls about how difficult it is to find modest clothes for them, but how she will go to that effort.

As a mother of boys, I say "Wonderful.  Awesome.  Praise God.  Keep up the Good Work!"  I have had the pleasure of realizing lately just how sheltered my family is.  We don't have TV so we're not facing all of the scanitly clad and downright filthy stuff.  When we go over to others' homes and catch a bit of TV, I am so glad that we don't have it anymore.  The commercials are HORRIBLE and on many shows focus on teen & preteen dating issues.  Blech!

Now that we live so far out in the country, we don't go to town a lot.  It's typically only once or twice a week so we're not surrounded by the latest fashion trends there.  We also home church, so we don't have to see all the skin that some folks choose to show on Sunday.  Usually when we get together with other families, they are like minded homeschoolers.  Right now, it seems like most of our friends have girls my 12 year old boy's age.  It has been great though because they dress appropriately and are just great friends.  None of that way too early boyfriend/girlfriend kind of stuff.  As I watch with a mother's eye, I realize that Joe is going to look at girls as friends first.  He's going to know that they are strong, have strong beliefs, are a lot of fun, honor God with their appearance, treat others with respect and expect to be respected.  For that, I am truly thankful.

We recently went to a friend's house that we used to go to church with.  She has a daughter Joe's age so  there were lots of girls that age there too.  The first thing that shocked me was what many of those girls were wearing!  Some were ok, but some of the others had shorts that were skin tight and really short.  Some had the halter tops or tank tops with their belly hanging out and skirts that rode low on their hips and barely covered their rears.  I thought "Note to self, talk to the boys about this on the way home". 

Then all of these girls noticed my Joe.  They started overtly flirting with him!  I've heard it before, but now I've seen it - those girls were aggressive.  Some of them were playing dumb and just being downright goofy.  I could tell that Joe didn't even get it at first.  These were friends that he used to be in church musicals and Sunday School class with and they were just so different now.  He expected to just play volleyball and have a good time, but they were practically hanging on them.  Some of the mothers even told their daughters "Quit flirting" so I know that they knew it was inappropriate.  I just wondered for some of them, who bought the clothes they were wearing - why would they let their daughters dress like that and then expect them to act differently?

After awhile, I noticed Joe sticking right next to me.  The girls had gone and changed into their pajamas and were now running around in front of him in their jammies.  So we knew it was time to go.  As we were leaving, one of the girls said, "Joe, I can't believe you're going to leave me here with all of these crazy girls.  You've got to at least give me a hug!" 

I stepped in and said, "Oh, if you need a hug, I'll hug you." and then whispered in her ear, "I'm the only girl he's allowed to hug!"

I talked to Joe a little bit about all of it on the way home.  He doesn't like to talk about stuff like that too much, but his main comment was that it wasn't as much fun because the girls weren't acting like themselves.  I felt so badly for some of those girls that have given into peer pressure and society's idea of what a preteen/teenage girl is supposed to be like.  I remember trying to be popular in public school at that age.  It wasn't pretty back then either.   Those girls are precious daughters of the King, but they're just trying to fit in with the world.   It's normal to want to fit in with others at that age so I know that we have to look beyond their apprearances and remember the tender heart that is within those grown-up looking bodies.  I'm just thankful that my kids don't have to be in public school and deal with that kind of pressure daily, it would be tough.

So to you moms of girls, thanks for going to the effort to dress your daughters modestly and to teach them to be the Proverbs 31 kind of girls God intended them to be.  It makes raising a strong Christian young man a little easier and a whole lot more fun!