Posted by Dannah Gresh, creator of Secret Keeper Girl

Two years ago, my sweet Lexi brought me an exciting article. In it, tween idol Miley Cyrus said that the book on her nightstand was none other than one by my dear friend Susie Shellenberger, Girl Talk With God! A few days later, Lexi found another article reporting that Miley’s favorite band was Christian. (Never mind that they were a “scream” band. I was just glad they were screaming about something good!) We started praying for Miley right away—that she might stick to her faith when the industry began to press in on her to “grow up!” (Read “get sexual!”)

I do not doubt that Miley is a Christian, but this year’s Vanity Fair shoot and some on-line shots didn’t bode well for our little heroine. And on October 8^th, this photo was released of her possibly revealing a belly button ring.  For the sake of my tween visitors, I won’t post the photos here! I will say that I sure hope they are doctored photos or I’m seeing a dangling bead from her belt. Whether these photos are true or not it brings up the question of how to talk to your daughter about the infamous belly button ring!

Well, some good question to ask her would be: How have men responded to the possibility of Miley’s piercing? What goes on in their minds? Is it “just fashion?” I loathe this, but I’m going to actually offer you the words of male celebrity gossip icon, Perez Hilton. He wrote:


And so it begins!!! It all starts to go downhill with a belly ring!!! Miley Cyrus showed off a new navel piercing at her big 16th birthday bash at Disneyland on Sunday.    

Getting your belly button pierced isn’t exactly “wholesome” is it????

What’s next???

We give her three months before pictures of her boozin’ it up or smoking a joint hit the Net!

-Perez Hilton, Celebrity Gossip Columnist    

 

Men view belly button rings as sexual. Your sweet girl might think it’s “cool” or “in fashion.” but guys think it is sexual. Vote no when you daughter pleads. How do you talk to her about it? Get to the heart. My number one question for my girls when they want to do something that I don’t want them to do is this: WHAT IS YOUR MOTIVATION? It opens them up and sometimes reveals what they themselves cannot see. What will you do to talk to your daughter?

I was so excited that so many of you were asking to win “My Best Friend Jesus,” our new Bible study for tweens. How great that so many moms want to influence their daughters to study the Bible. The winners of our Secret Keeper Girl stuff have three days to email us at eileen@purefreedom.org with mailing addresses.My Best Friend Jesus Bible Study goes to:

CF_Ivy   

caroline42

clezniak 

mouserfam25 

Danika’s Totally Terrible Toss goes to:

sprimom 

Just Call Me Kate goes to:

cnelson 

Yuzi’s False Alarm goes to:

maeling42 

T is for Antonia goes to:

jme 

Secret Keeper Girl Date Kit #1 goes to:

princess77 

Secret Keeper Girl Date Kit #2 goes to:

Deblynn 

From Dannah Gresh, Creator of Secret Keeper Girl 

“I loved every single one,” chimed reader Ashley Reed about the four new Secret Keeper Girl fiction books. “When are the next ones coming out?” Well Ashley, the new ones just came out 23 days ago, girl!

 I know your daughters (or you) will gobble up the fun and the solid family values taught in the Secret Keeper Girl fiction books. And, I’m hoping that the Secret Keeper Girl Club written about in the books will encourage moms and daughters to start their own clubs using our “8 Great Date Kits” and the brand new Secret Keeper Girl Bible study entitled “My Best Friend, Jesus!” I have some author’s copies that my publisher gave me for free and I want to pass them on to you! So, wanna win some free stuff? I’m giving away one of each of our Secret Keeper GIRL products plus three Secret Keeper GIRL t-shirts to ten winners who comment on this blog by November 3rd! Retail value of each item is between $7.99 and $19.99! You get to pick WHAT you win! It’s really easy. To enter:

•Stop by the Secret Keeper Girl bookstore and pick your favorite product.  

•Then, come back and mention your fav in a comment posted here. That’s it!

•TEN random winners will be selected on November 3rd and posted in a blog.

•The winners will have three days to claim their prize.

Hey, can you tell five friends about this so they can enter to? Love to you moms and Secret Keeper Girls!  (Employees of Secret Keeper Girl/Pure Freedom or Grace Prep are ineligible! But tell your friends, anyway!)

We told you that moms are always the ones to fight during our helium fliers mother/daughter showdown! Check out this mom! Well, she was there for a fight, but not this one. She was there for fight for her daughter. And she did by introducing her to true beauty and modesty. (And we got a whole lot of signatures for our 50,000 mom Bod Squad petition last night! Those are fightin’ moms!) Dannah, Stephanie and Suzy had so much fun presenting Secret Keeper Girl in Bedford, Ohio last night! We debuted our Secret Keeper Girl fiction books and couldn’t believe that we sold more books than there were mothers and daughters! Thanks! A few girls grabbed “Just Call Me Kate” and read it out loud as they waited in line for the authors to sign. They were giggling their little heads off! For the team, that was a highlight of the night. We can’t wait to see how this fiction series changes the culture of little girls for good as they learn about modesty, NOT being boy-crazy, how to deal with mean girls and more through the lives of Danika, Kate, Toni and Yuzi! Hey, Bedford Secret Keeper Girls…give us a shout out so that we know what your favorite part of the night was! Here are some fab photos!

If your daughter is as young as nine, you may have already been asked to vaccinate her against HPV. Dannah Gresh and Pure Freedom have taken a stand concerning the HPV vaccination. Gardasil, the HPV vaccine that has been approved by the FDA for use in girls as young as nine years old, claims to vaccinate young women from the human pappilomavirus which is a sexually transmitted disease. The vaccine works against only four of more than one hundred strains of HPV. It does not eliminate exposure to HPV or cervical cancer completely. Furthermore, many advocacy groups are questioning the scrutiny with which the FDA examined the vaccine. Many side effects are being reported for girls taking Gardasil including blot clotting (the most common) and dizziness or seizures. In some cases drastic side effects such as paralysis and death are being linked to Gardasil. Personally, Dannah Gresh has chosen not to vaccinate her two fourteen year old daughters. She would no more vaccinate them to give them protection against a sexually transmitted disease than hand them a condom so they can have sex safely. The fact is that if you are being aggressive about training your daughter to live abstinent until marriage, it is a contradiction to vaccinate her against a sexually transmitted disease. This is not a decision you need to make until she is older and her body is stronger and she is entering marriage. In the few years that exist between now and then, more progress will be made on how safe and effective this vaccine is for a woman and a decision can be made when she becomes sexually active within marriage. If you fear that your daughter is sexually active, you may be faced with a more difficult decision. You might want to sit down with her and go through the risks of HPV and other sexually transmitted diseases and spend some time discussing the risks before you make a decision. What decision have you made for your daughter?

Posted by Dannah Gresh, Creator of Secret Keeper Girl In 2009, The Bod Squad (that’s moms, grandma’s and women who are insensed with the fashion industries sexualization of little girls) will present a petition to both the Council of Fashion Designers of America and the Apparel and Footwear Manufacturer’s Association. We hope that as a result Women’s Wear Daily, the global “bible” of the fashion industry, will cover the petition and tell the entire fashion world. Dannah has been interviewed twice by the magazine to discuss the industries marketing of sensual clothing to tweens. She has their ear, but she needs your support to send them a clear message.Will you join The Bod Squad?Go here to learn more! http://www.secretkeepergirl.com/Bod_Squad_Petition.aspx

Posted by Dannah Gresh, Creator of Secret Keeper Girl  I was on a national call-in radio show the other day and a mom called in pretty freaked out because her fourteen year old wanted to shave. Then, a comment to Janet’s post last week ended with the question…”When do you let your daughter shave?” Well, it seems like this issue is related to the all-important topic of protecting her little-girl-hood, so let’s talk! First, let me say that I have two fourteen year old girls and I DID NOT get to pick when they began to shave. Lexi was about nine when she came to me and asked in a tell-tale voice, “Mommy, how old do I have to be to shave?” I smiled and responded, “Well, how did it go?” She revelled in letting me feel her freshly shaven legs…with only a few knicks. I began to teach her how to do it safely, and the passion passed in a few weeks until she was about thirteen. Autumn, my newly adopted daughter who being Chinese would not have to shave until she’s about ninety, took it upon herself to begin this summer. They are going to be curious at some point and that in itself might be a sign that it’s time to talk turkey! Second, let me suggest that shaving isn’t something that makes them necessarily appear older (which is something that you’ll find I blog about a lot because it is dangerous for them), but at a certain point in their lives it does make them appear…well, uh, clean! I think withholding it when it is something they desire may leave them open to being made fun of. I’d err on the side of cleanliness. What did I tell the woman who called in? I suggested she buy her daughter a razor! What would you say?

By Janet Mylin co-author of Just Call Me Kate from the SKG Fiction series  So, my daughter’s starting to ask questions. Not fun little questions like “Mommy, why can’t I feed the dog a chocolate bar?” These questions are THE questions: “Mommy, why does Jack’s body (Jack’s her baby brother) look different from mine?” and “Mommy, when will I wear a bra?” and “Billy tried to kiss me on the cheek in the lunch line today. Why?”  I very quickly realized I needed some help in wording the answers to these questions appropriately for a 7 year old, so I immediately headed down to one of those big bookstores I love so much. As I read through the “coming of age” books written for girls her age, I almost fell over. The more I read, the more my mouth dropped open in horror as I read what these authors deemed appropriate material for MY baby girl. They all mentioned homosexuality as a normal way of life for anybody. Not ONE of the books mentioned sex within the context of marriage. It was all along the lines of “when two people care for each other very much” without talking about God’s design for sex or the painful consequences of sex outside of marriage. One book even explained masturbation in great detail and stated “This is something you never do in front of someone else. This is something you should always do privately” illustrated by a cartoon girl hanging  a Do Not Disturb sign on her bedroom door! Needless to say, I practically ran out of the store I was so upset and promptly called a few friends with girls of similar ages to fill them in on my findings. Every one of them was completely shocked. So, what did I learn in the midst of trying to teach my daughter? I learned that I absolutely cannot depend on the world to teach my little girl Godly principles and promises. I need to depend on God’s Word and people who love Jesus to receive holy advice to help me raise her up to be a woman of purity. I definitely cannot do this alone.�

By Dannah Gresh, Creator of Secret Keeper Girl  Hi, moms! I want to invite you to be a part of The SKG Bod Squad! What is that? It’s a group of moms who are insensed by the world’s insatiable appetite to eat up our daughter’s childhood by pressing them into boy-craziness, mini-skirts and make-up! I’ve been on the rampage for a few years, but am starting to feel a little lonely. Oh, I’ve seen over 100,000 moms and daughters finish the “8 Great Dates” to talk about modesty, but I’ve not been able to hear from them nearly as much as I’d like to. So, I’ve decided that rather than just create products for moms and daughters, I want to create a forum for moms to talk. We’re all in this together and we need to stand together? WHY? Because it turns out, I’m right! Last year the American Psychological Association released the findings of a two year study about the sexualization of girls. The findings would frighten any mom into locking up her daughter and throwing away the key. It turns out that little girls who have boyfriends at an early age, dress like teens (read: immodest teens), and explore things like make-up turn out to be some of the most sexually repressed adult women in our culture. Ironic, isn’t it? In giving them it all too soon, they end up actually losing it. Are you aggravated with the pressure to tell your daughter “no” to so much? Then, join me. I need your voice!