Ministry with Children

Media sexualization of young girls

Salon.com has an important interview with M. Gigi Durham, a professor of mass communication at the University of Iowa, on the occasion of the publication of her new book The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It.

One of the reasons I got involved with media literacy, lo these many years ago, has to do with wanting to find ways to empower young women beyond the destructive images of female-ness so pervasive in popular culture. That was 30 years ago. I find it more distressing than I can express that things have gotten worse, rather than better.

Read Durham's book. Get involved in media education. Build spaces for empowering young women AND young men (especially the blogroll) beyond these destructive dynamics. Make these issues a central part of your faith formation and identity work in communities of faith (Claire Bischoff's work is worthy of attention in this area).

Children's Charter

Hat tip to Dawn for reminding me of the Children's Charter (courtesy of the Episcopal Church USA). This site also has links to a number of very useful free pdfs.

Young children's use of online sites

ConsumerReports WebWatch just released an interesting study of young children's use of online sites. It was quite small -- only 10 families participated -- but used an interesting qualitative methodology that included video journalling. Some key findings here.

Youth and social networking

Here's a great list of articles that have influenced TimBoyd's thoughts about social networking -- they should influence ours, as well.

Excellent children's ministry

Here's a little "pick-me-up" that might help remind you how to keep moving from "good to great" in your children's ministries.

Children's Summit

We've just sent out a round of emails to people who attended the Children's Summit last month, and it's worth reproducing the news here.

First, that it was wonderful to gather with over 300 people to reflect on welcoming children--all children.

Second, an offering of $655.01 from the closing worship service was given to the Interfaith Children's Advocacy Network.

And third, visit the Ministry with Children blog for more on the summit, and watch videos of the Children's Summit presentations.

Reaching out to young people

Here's a great free handbook on how to reach young voters -- and of course, much of the advice is relevant more generally, in reaching out to young people. Points like "talk about relevant issues," "reduce the rhetoric," "be real," "treat them with respect," and "just do it." Imagine what could happen if we followed this advice in communities of faith!

Teens, technology and writing

Pew has released an interesting report on teens, technology and writing. One finding surprised me: that teens write more often by hand, than by computer, both in and out of school. (Hat tip to Bob)

iCan resources for congregations

The interfaith children's advocacy network has free resources available for helping congregations work on awareness of child abuse, and prevention.

Kids will be kids...

Rich Melheim's blog made me smile! He included these two quotes:

"Our youth today love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect for older people. Children nowadays are tyrrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyranize their teachers." - Socrates, 425 B.C. "Our earth is degenerate in these latter days, bribery and corruption are common, children no longer obey their parents; everyone wants to write a book!" - (From a 4,700 year-old Assyrian Tablet)