In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, there was an article on the front page of the Personal Journal about the relationship between fashion labels and bullying.

Not only do the kids need to have designer clothes to be safe from teasing from other girls-they have to be the right designers! I guess I wasn’t surprised that designer clothes were important statements for kids-I caved in and bought my daughter a pair of UGG boots when the knock off pair didn’t make the grade. What surprised me is the hierarchy of designer duds.

Of course, this in not being helped by the fact that more and more designers are -targeting young girls and girl-to-girl bullying is growing at an alarmingly fast rate. One-third of middle school girls surveyed answered “yes” when they were asked if they had been bullied due to the clothes that they wear.

Many of us use our clothing to reflect how we see ourselves, but as adults we are much less affected (hopefully) by the criticism of others. Many of us have been able to find our sense of style-eclectic, traditional, hip or whatever and live with it.

Our daughters don’t have the luxury of the same point of view. What they wear matters-even in elementary school and becomes a point of differentiation and potential ridicule.

While the brain pool contemplates why fashion is so important to girls’ identities parents are faced with the consequences of fashion bullying.

Beyond lobbying your school for a uniform (a parents dream and a fashionista girl’s nightmare) there are some things you can do:
1. acknowledge that fashion bullying exists-especially for girls

2. Look at the images of fashion in the media-from Angelina’s mom and daughter
matching Chanel bags to Lourdes’ (Madonna’s girl) Juicy Couture sweatsuit.
See what happens to the children who aren’t dressed in designer duds-what
is their race, socio-economic background, etc. Do you and your daughter see any patterns?

3. If it is feasible, get a few designer pieces and help your child
accessorize the pieces she has. It is said that the women in France-arguably among the chicest in the world have a few fabulous outfits and know how to tie a scarf 100 ways.

4. help your child develop her own sense of fashion-what looks good on her
how does she feel when she wears certain clothes, capitalize on what
she thinks she looks good in.

5. Set an example by showing your daughter that you are comfortable with
your style-whatever it is. If you “need” designer clothes just because
they are designer clothes, then this might be a good time to look at that.

And always talk and listen to your kids-ask them how they feel and be supportive. A statement like “I am sorry that you feel that way” goes a lot farther than advice to ignore feelings. “Don’t worry about that” or “You shouldn’t feel that way” are some of the most self-esteem deflating statements in the world.

Remember, fashion bullying is alive and well-just like all other types of bullying and its consequences are just as real, too.

Have a great weekend.

With respect,
Deb

Another adoption scandal in making news this week. A woman in Florida is accused of terribly mistreating 11 kids and disabled adults that she had adopted over the last decade-all while bilking the system for $3 million dollars. To make matters worse,as she was cruelly humiliating the children of adoption, she was she was showering her one biological child with love, attention and material goodies-alleged to be funded in part by the money that was supposed to be used to raise the children she adopted.

But is the real story about adoption? Or, did she happen upon a way to circumvent the system to the tune of $3 million? Was she just after the money? Or did she want to abuse kids? Perhaps adoption was the facilitator to her money-making scheme. After all, robbing a bank or embezzling from an employer might be more work.

We may never know the real answers to these questions, but we do know that yet another negative adoption story-that may not even be about adoption-reinforces many of the stereotypes that we have about adoption.

Many prospective adoptive parents fear that they will not be able to love their child of adoption as they would a biological child. Reading this horrendous story-conspicuously reported without speculation on other reasons-plays right into that fear-and may even discourage parents from adopting (unless they want the money!). It also ‘reminds’ people that families formed by adoption are at best ‘flawed’.Couple that with the difficulty that the foster care systems that are already inundated with children they are struggling to find a home for and you get lots of kids without homes and more cemented and inaccurate biases against adoption, families formed through adoption and children of adoption.

The usual outcry from the adoption community is that the media never covers ‘good’ adoption stories-which is true. Unfortunately ‘good’ stories don’t sell papers and magazines. For whatever reason, we like controversy and we like the horror stories. If we didn’t the media would write about other things.

Still, this misses the point. The media-and all of us-need to question what this woman’s (and others like her) motives are/were. If we dig a little deeper, we may find out that it is about the adoption system rather than about adopting children. The kids were merely a means to a very profitable end. By giving them nothing she was able to lavish her biological son with rewards.

As usual, Tom Cruise’s famous line in Jerry McGuire, “show me the money” is likely where the real story-albeit probably less likely to sell papers-is.

Until we change what really needs changing-the system-we will continue to reinforce negative stereotypes and biases about adoption and the families who are touched by adoption.

Those biases don’t do us or our kids any good. Make sure that when you talk about family formation with your kids-you focus on the reality and not the hype. Nip the biases in the bud and we can level the playing field for all families.

With Respect,
Deb

We just missed Brad Pitt and one of his sons when we were in New York City. I am sure Brad and I would have hit it off beautifully becaues Angelina Jolie Angelina and I have a lot in common.

Ok, so she is a young, beautiful and a talented actress and I am a 40 something, slightly overweight, harried mom who and can’t act her way out of a paper bag-but really here is what we share:

1. growing our families through adoption

2. trans-racial families

3. working moms

4. a deep committment to make the world a better place

Angelina and Brad have the eyes of the world press on them all the time. I have a seven year old velcroed to me most of the time-but I have you. And there are kids that need your help (and you don’t even have to adopt them!).

Child abuse-running the gamet from bullying to death-is a huge issue right here in the good ole US of A and there are MILLIONS of children that need to be protected right now. On behalf of these children I have set up a fund-raising program thru Firstgiving-a safe and well respected online fundraising operation-to raise money for Love Our Children, USA (http://www.loveourchildrenusa.org/)- a nearly decade old non-profit dedicated to ending all forms of child abuse. And knowing the executive director, Ross Ellis as I do, they will succeed.

Here is the link to the site:http://www.firstgiving.com/bullyeraser

Any little bit helps-and no contribution is too small. Someone very wise told me once “it takes a lot of raindrops to fill the ocean”.

So let’s let some raindrops fall into our ocean-starting right now.

Now let me get back to Jolie-Pitt watching-maybe next time, I will get to have that little chat with Brad. And I hear that he really IS that handsome.

Cheers,

Deb