When the kids were little, I would always say... "now remember some things aren't real, like fairy tales!" I loved a good fairy tale as much as the next person but... I worried that if they got too into the fantasy world, that they would be disappointed in the real world. I didn't watch soap operas for that reason.
When I was a young girl, my grandmother, mother and I would always watch General Hospital every day after school. I remember one particular time when we were all there watching on TV and my younger brother was playing with his Fisher Price toy right by us. At one point, we found out that someone in the show was pregnant, we were shocked! My mother said " oh my gosh, who could the father be? " To which my LITTLE ( maybe 4 years old ) said, " oh it's Bobby's baby, didn't you know?" I will never forget my Mom's face and how shocked she was, that my brother was even paying attention. That was a great lesson to me...if you don't want your children to see it, listen to it. or do it, then you have to be the one that turns it off or doesn't do it yourself!
I especially drilled into my girl's heads, that life isn't always like a fairy tale or fantasy...some times it is very hard and frustrating. I want them to know that True Love is much, much better than any FANTASY, could be. But since it is hard. I think the danger in all the FANTASY that is all around us (like soap operas, movies, pornography, chat rooms, Internet dating, and on and on) that we will never be satisfied with REAL LIFE! There is a great danger in always pretending to be something you are not. It seems so innocent but it ISN'T! And there have been many, many relationships, marriages and lives ruined because of it. So.. I guess I am a bit cautious!
Now no matter what I said to Lauren as a kid, she still loves the fairy tales. Now as I have mentioned, she is a photographer and like me, some times she gets her best inspiration in the middle of the night. Her latest creative photo shoot that she dreamed up, was doing the four seasons, you can see on her work on her blog...www.adayinwashington.blogspot.com, it is neat to have her tell us about it, and then a day or two later, actually see how she made it happen. Now she has come up with the idea of making a photo shoot of the Modest Modern Disney Princesses. I was wondering how she is going to pull it off and yet she did! Here is the first one of Ariel.
"Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." ~G. K. Chesterton
"He is rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy, or demon who possesses such power as that." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again." ~ C. S. Lewis
