#FF Friday's Fabulous Finds: Gifts for Mothers & Their Children

Thought for the Day: Here are my Friday's Fabulous Finds for the week. In keeping with Mother's Day, I chose articles that I see as gifts to mothers everywhere. If you are new to my blog, you may want to take a look at the 5 part series I posted last year as well. (Part I: How the World Would Change If My Mother Ruled the World, Part II- Mother's Day Series: If My Grandmother Ruled the World, Part III- Mother's Day Series: If My Grandmother, Mother and I Ruled the World. Mother's Day Part IV: If My Step-Mother Ruled the World, & Mother's Day Part V: If My Daughters Ruled the World. If you are looking for videos to send to your mothers, there are several good ones included in the Mother's Day series from last year. I hope you will have a wonderful Mother's Day. Tomorrow's Songs for the Soul will bring a special story about a song that helped save one songwriter's life, so tune in.


Here are this week's Fabulous Finds:

1) Child Abuse Hotline Ad Uses Photographic Trick That Makes It Visible Only To Children by Betsy Isaacson   An innovative sign that can help stop child abuse by using modern technology. It's message with a phone number to call if a child is being abused is visible only to children. (Sorry for the strange formatting, but I can't seem to fix it!)

Tracey Stewart with her daughter

2) Stand Up for Girls Big and Small by Tracey Stewart  addresses how to combat a strange tendency among some women to be hypercritical of other women.

 

 

 

3) Keep Your Flowers on Mother's Day, I Want My Rights by Shannon Watts. I had the honor of meeting Shannon Watts when I went to Washington DC to advocate for sensible gun control laws. Shannon is the Founder, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which has grown to 100,000 moms across the USA. In her article, this Mother's Day, Shannon suggests that we skip the flowers & fight for our rights to make the world safer for our children.

4) A Mother's Day Letter for a Special Needs Mom  by Suzanne Perryman Perryman is a blogger at SpecialNeedsMom.com. This letter is written to mothers who's children may not write them Mother's Day Cards or thank them for all that they do 24/7, 365 days a year.

Claire Bidwell Smith's Mother

5) On Being a Motherless Mother by Claire Bidwell Smith,  a Los Angeles-based grief therapist & author of the memoir 'The Rules of Inheritance,' writes about an experience with her impulsive mother & how she reconnects with her mother who passed away. For those of you whose mothers are no longer living, Mother's Day can be rough. This touching post may be helpful.

The Hunger Games Parenting Nightmare or Opportunity?

                       Parenting Nightmare or Opportunity?

Thought for the day: I heard a story once about the difference between heaven & hell. In the story,  in hell there was a huge banquet table overflowing with food. The people seated at the banquet table had long spoons attached to their arms. The spoons made it impossible for the people to bend their arms, so they could not reach their mouths & feed themselves. The people at the banquet in this version of hell were all starving. In heaven, there was an identical banquet table. The people at the banquet table in heaven also had long spoons attaches to their arms, however, these people were not starving. The people in heaven had figured out that they could feed one another & they were all enjoying the bounty. Even when we are faced with difficult situations, we have choices.  The movie, The Hunger Games raises similar moral & ethical questions. What would you do if you were challenged by life & death issues? What do you want your children & teens to learn from movies like The Hunger Games?

Yesterday, I went to see the movie, The Hunger Games. It is not the kind of movie I tend to frequent. When I heard the story line about choosing teenagers in a lottery to fight to the death in a televised "reality show," I was anxious about the impact it would have on our youth. I went to see it to be prepared to help parents & teens in my clinical practice process this blockbuster movie which brought in $152.5 million^[5] (USD) on its opening weekend in North America. I am glad I went & would encourage parents to see the movie before their children, so that they will be prepared to talk about the questions the movie will raise for their children. It does not need to be a parenting nightmare any more than the book, The Lord of the Flies which is taught in most schools across the USA.

The movie is a powerful critique of many things which are happening in our society. One of the characters says, "It's only a television show." It raises questions about how television productions can distort & sensationalize reality. Each of the "Tributes," children chosen as sacrifices to fight to death for their district, is taken to the capitol to be packaged, branded & prepared to try to get "sponsors" to support them. The 2 tributes from District 12, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) &  Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) are followed as they try to survive & hold true to themselves & their values. Katniss volunteers to be a tribute to save her younger sister who was picked in the lottery. She then befriends & tries to protect a younger tribute from another district. She also protects Peeta from her district. The children & adults from the districts are trapped like sacrificial lambs. The parents in  are impotent & unable to protect their children. The adults in the opulent capital are portrayed as childish caricatures of adults enjoying the horrors as if they were at a Mardi Gras celebration. The leaders, like the character portrayed by Donald Sutherland are cynical, calculating, & controlling. They give minimal hope to the districts to keep them subservient.

Unfortunately,  in our world today, in Africa, Asia & the Middle East children are being used to fight in adult wars. Terrorist recruit suicide bombers among dissatisfied teens. In 2010, the United Nations started the Zero Under 18 campaign to help stop the deployment of children to fight wars. Throughout our world, even in the United States, human trafficking of children & teens is happening. Children are being abused, kidnapped & used as prostitutes. Organizations like A Child Is Missing, featured in my book, help protect children from being abducted or kidnapped. Although there has not been a Hunger Games TV show, we need to protect our children from the abuses of children in our world. The movie will bring up the uncomfortable, yet real questions of what you are doing or can do to protect children from child abuse & war.

The kinds of discussions that this film can provide are worth having with your children.  What could parents have done to protect their children? After one of the tributes was killed one district did try to fight back. How could adults help one another & fight back? What could the children have done to fight back? The time to protest is before dictators take over. Are there things happening in the world that we as Americans who have freedom can help prevent? Are we like the people in heaven or like those hell, failing to see that there are ways we can help one another?