Tweens & Teens: Too Sexy, Too Soon

These days, tweens are growing up faster and dressing more provocatively than ever before. Is today's society and the parents of today's youth too accepting of this trend?

With that question being a constant in the day to day growing world of social media, I first want to say that while no I am not a parent, that does not prevent me from recognizing the problems arising in today's youth. Now that I have made that clear, I will say that yes parents are far too accepting of this growing trend of provocative dress and they need to be more active and up to date on what their kids are doing and watching on television. When these tweens have people like Miley Cyrus to look up to and want to emulate, it is the parents responsibility to make sure they know what their kids are wearing. Let's face it the majority of youth today are not out working yet, so they are getting an allowance from their guardians. It's simple when they come home after spending your money, pretend it's like Halloween and you're inspecting the candy...look at their purchased clothing and if it is too risque then you return it and find something more suitable. It's called taking an active role in your child's life!

The problem today is the majority of these kids do not have proper relationships with their parents; they see them as friends more so than parents. They call their parents by their first name, and it's disrespectful and some adults do not correct them and say 'I am your mother/father, call me mom/dad.' Another issue in play these days is the parents standing firm on not wanting the schools to be too active over their children. However, if the parents won't do their job then where are these kids going to get guidance from? They are obsessed with people that are famous for no reason (ie - The Jersey Shore cast) and yet parents allow them to watch this mindless and frankly irresponsible programming.

Where is the adult supervision anymore... and what happened to proper parent/child relations and simply letting children be children. Today you see parents posting videos on youtube of their child misbehaving telling them that their punishment for acting out will be strangers on the internet watching the video. Also those parents that are subjecting their 4-year-old kids to hair extensions and lip gloss and high heels for beauty pageant competitions. They themselves are making their offspring look like adult women, and so who is to blame really when these kids end up in trouble? They are forced to grow up way too fast and it shows in their personalities and lack of respect for authoritative figures (ie - school officials, police, etc.) The parenting and responsibility of today's adults over their kids is severely lacking and it is for this reason we are seeing increases in teen pregnancies, STD transmission in schools, and physical violence. All of this derived from youth's obsession to be the next 'Jersey Shore' fame? Doesn't seem worth it to me...

I could go on forever, I'll stop here though and get working on my next piece. My final thought: parents need to open their eyes and pay attention to their children and use those parental controls and regulate the amount of time their children spend in front of a television or a computer! They need to open up a dialogue with their kids, know who their friends are and a basis of what they talk about together. It's time to remind them that they are... just kids!