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| Recommend Girl Books Age 6-8 |
This post is specifically on girls and the formation of the virtues to destroy the predominant fault.
Starting with vanity, one knows that the opposing virtue is humility. Charity is also a virtue which can overcome vanity.
But, the parent is the main formator of the child. This excuse that the peers form the child is ridiculous, as it is the parents who give in to the peer pressure not the child.
I see very young girls daily in clothes which can only be described as slutty or prostitute clothes. Even in churches, many mothers allow their young girls, ages six to ten, for example, to dress with midriffs showing, underwear showing, and wearing nothing but tights-no skirts.
Now, the child did not go out and buy these clothes, the mothers did. The mothers are creating a monster girl, a princess who thinks she can have anything she wants and who is being taught to be a slave to fashion.
Vanity is being encouraged. To be vain, all a girl needs is to be taught that the exterior is more important than the interior life. Vanity is encouraged by giving the girl the right to think about her clothes, her hair, her nails, her shoes, etc. as more important than developing the virtues given to her at baptism.
Also, too many mothers are not honest with their girls about their outward appearance. A child does not have to think she is the most beautiful person in the world. In fact, saying that over and over creates a false view of the self and also creates false expectations.
The entire Walt Disney princess preoccupation, as I have noted before on this blog, is dangerous.
Not all girls are princesses, and the models for holiness are not those who hung on to worldly power, including the power of sexual attraction, money and status, but those saints who gave those up for higher goods.Young girls do not need to be spending allowances on clothes, make-up and jewelry. This type of laxity is dangerous to the formation of virtue.
An excellent book can help a girl move away from princess preoccupation which destroys the real beauty of the virtues.
St. Etheldreda, the patroness of this blog, and many in her family, gave up being princesses and even queens in order to pursue holiness. This is a movement completely in antithesis to the Disney brainwashing. A girl may be a princess of a day on her birthday, but the rest of the year, mom should be teaching her to be a servant.
One of the best stories for a girl is the life of Blessed Humbeline, the sister of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Now, the book I am recommending is a children's book, but parents can benefit from it as well. It is charming. And I have written about Humbeline on this blog under the label saints and martyrs. And, here and here...http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.ie/2013/02/saints-of-february-continuedhumbeline.html
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.ie/2013/08/more-on-my-favourite-saints-family.html
I wish the publishers had used a different cover, as this depiction is not necessarily a true picture of what is inside the book. The one I had read, published in the 1950s, had child-friendly illustrations.
Humbeline was vain and gave it all up. She is only one example. But, her brothers challenged her to become holy. And, she did.
Obviously, a mother may have the same predominant fault as her girls or girls. When the Bible states that a woman is saved by child-bearing, one of the meanings of that pregnant (pun intended) phrase is that one sees one's one sins and flaws when one is raising children and one can respond in grace and gratitude for changing and converting in the second conversion, when one is working with the character building of one's children.
To be continued...