A plea to all young/future mothers.

The other day I dragged Jake to Bath and Body works because we were all out of hand soap in the bathroom, and my hands have become too spoiled to buy the grocery store brands anymore. Imagine my surprise when most everything in the store was 50-75% off! So I grabbed some body wash too, since I was about out of that. Spent about $5 in total. Cheaper than the grocery store stuff! For all you ladies, go check out your local Bath and Body Works; the sale goes through til sometime in July.

But that's not what this post is about...

While in said store, we were waiting in line to purchase said products, and in front of us was this woman who, from behind, looked to be about 25. She turned around and I realized she had to be at least 10-15 years older. TONS of colorful makeup, especially around the eyes. I have no problem with women wanting to look younger as the grow older. But she was sporting some clothes that should not be worn by anyone over the age of 18. I decided not to judge (as you can see), but then I looked next to her and saw her daughter who couldn't be older than 9 or 10 years old. I'd say 8. She was a cute little blonde haired girl, but something was wrong. Oh yes. She was wearing pitch black mascara. At such a young age! Not only that but she was wearing clothing very similar to her mother's, trying to act around the age of 25 as well. She also had a designer purse that was about the size of half her body.

This is where the mother erred. She was allowing her very young daughter to believe that she could dress and act like a teenager already. Mothers: Please don't do this to your beautiful little girls! They are only children for such a short period of time. Do you really want to blur those lines in her life? Imagine looking at her on her wedding day, and you can't remember her being young and carefree, playing in the park and coming in with grass stains. There is a time and a place for children to grow up. But at the age of 8 or 9? No. Makeup and expensive purses are not a necessity for a girl at such an age.

Society has made such behavior okay. Have you heard of or seen the TV show "Toddlers and Tiaras"?

Little girls wear bikinis, wear fake hair, fake teeth and learn to dance provocatively in order to beat other girls who do the same thing. I don't need to explain how absolutely perverted and disgusting this is. This is an extreme case, but this is what some mothers do to their daughters! And television broadcasts this, not only making them spoiled but spoiled television stars. What lies ahead for these girls? I don't want to know. Though I'm sure MTV will find them for shows such as "My Super Sweet 16" or maybe even "16 And Pregnant".

Life has a natural progression. We are born, and must depend on our parents for survival. We go through our toddler years and early childhood, where we must still learn from our parents and see them as role models (not your friend who will teach you how to apply makeup). Our preteen and teen years are meant to discover who it is we really are. Late teen and early adulthood is still a little bit of that, but it is only then that we must truly discover our own independence. We should never rob our children of discovering life in each era fully. Some of my most treasured memories stem from the first 10 years of my life, when I was free to be a kid.