Look closely.

Am I the only one annoyed by this? We try to be good parents. We monitor every single thing that comes into our house. The boys only get to play video games on the weekend, and even then, it’s Mario, Sonic, or Lego characters.

But what happens when you take your children to a restaurant/video game arcade? And not just one particular one, but pretty much all of them?

Scantily clad women waving flags on the motorcycle game. Ughhhhhhh. Why? Who is this for? Let’s look at this picture, shall we? Who is playing this game? A young girl and two young boys. Who just goes and stands around, occasionally getting to throw in a token ourselves? The grown-ups.

These games are mostly played by children, so why do we have showgirls waving flags? This is teaching this young girl “This is what you need to look like. This is hot. Aspire to this.” And this is teaching young boys, “Whoo-hoo! Women! Yeah! Don’t take us seriously.”

This doesn’t need to be set up as an accepted society standard of what womanhood means. My boys don’t need to deal with sexy images of women yet. They are young. I would never allow an image like that in my home or computer screen, so why would we want it in the arcade? Just because something is prevalent in our culture doesn’t mean it’s right, and the portrayal of women is one of those things.

This is how women are packaged in our society: as sex objects. Could we please get this out of our video games? Could we get this game out of arcades that are mostly frequented by children? Am I not the only one highly annoyed by this??

The post The Way Women are Portrayed at Arcades: This BUGS me!!! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Today Alan and I helped out with 1st and 2nd grade children’s church.  The usual teachers were out of town, but they left their young adult children to teach the class.  They just asked Alan and me to come and help with crowd control.  Easy job for us. I felt like such a tough guy–being in charge of behavior.  I had to put forth extra effort not to let this role get to my head because I was on a bit of a power trip.  HAAAAAA!

People very often carry on about the fact that I have four BOYS, but I’m not so sure that boys are the harder job.  In this particular class, the girls were actually the squirmy, spirited ones.  Alan and I have very LIMITED experience with little girls.  This class reminded me that they are not so very different from little boys.

There was, of course, this one girl in particular that was a bit….free spirited.  After her third attempt to escape to the bathroom and take her chosen friend with her, I decided to escort her to the bathroom myself.  I did not allow her to drag any friends with us, though.

I wasn’t about to be out smarted.  I stood in the door.  As she washed her hands, she kept stepping on each of the three stools (not that she even needed a stool).  I patiently waited without saying anything.

She finally turned around and said, “I have to step on the stools because in between them it’s all hot lava, and I don’t want to fall in.”

“Right,” I replied.

She whipped her head around, in surprise, “Did you say right!??”

I nodded.  “Lava.  Got it.”  This little girl is not overburdened by reality yet.  Why spoil a good imagination?

We managed to get back to the classroom, free of incident.  The little girls in the class just kept teaming up to try to sneak here or there, usually to the bathroom or underneath the piano.  Somehow, between the four of us, we did manage to keep them all quiet and in their seats.

Alan even ended the class with a very good presentation of the gospel.  Alan is so good with kids.

When it was all over, I asked the boys, “Ya’ll were so well behaved today.  Great job.  I really liked that.  Are you always that well behaved, or were you being better behaved because we were there?”

They both answered, “better because you were there.”  Ah.  Right. So who knows, maybe they’re normally as sneaky as the girls…

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I’m not quite the same since having the 4th baby.  I’m really not.  I can’t keep up with everything this job entails.  The fact is, I can’t keep up with ANYTHING since JD arrived. I really can’t.  I was at a party this Friday, and I mentioned that I needed to make myself a note on my hand about something so I wouldn’t forget.  The young mom I said this to was just horrified by my methods of remembering things:  hand notes and a wall calendar.

Do you still use a wall calendar?  I am told that it’s an outdated method for organization.  My new friend recommended that Alan and I use Google Calendar, and sync the calendars, so that we’re both tracking.  That makes a lot of sense.  She said I should have it on my phone.

That’s when I had to admit that I still use an old-school cell phone.  No data plan here.

I felt like a little old lady, out of touch with the latest in technology, so yesterday I made several attempts to get Google calendar downloaded onto my tablet. Only I was so tired from my lack of sleep that I just couldn’t focus on it.  I never did figure it out.  I might work on that today.  It can’t be hard. I’m sure Alan could help me.

Do any of you use Google calendars?  Do you find it helpful?

She also mentioned setting reminders for myself on my phone, as sometimes I forget to do things that I’m supposed to do.  I know my sister-in-law does that a lot.  My phone doesn’t have that capability either.

Have you found your smartphone to be advantageous in ways other than email?  I have a tablet, isn’t that just as good?

This has definitely been a year that has forced me to try to become more organized.  I can use all the good ideas I can get!!

The post Little Girls: Not So Different appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.