Train Up A Child....

"Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

Are your children cool? Are they the trend setters, the ones that everyone looks to for the latest fashions and styles? Do they watch all the hip shows and do they own all the newest and latest gadgets? Do they have their own computers in their rooms and their own high tech cell phone? Have they driven you crazy with their requests for things that are unreasonably priced, but they put the pressure on because it's the new cool thing and everyone has one?

If the answer to any of this is yes, then let me state for the record you are being targeted. Actually it's your kids that are being targeted but the side effect is that it targets you as well, you have more money then the kids but you are actually only the secondary target.

This weekend I was sent a couple of links that showed just how corporations and big business have been teaming up to target your kids and, secondarily, you into buying whatever product it is that they are trying to sell at the time.None of this is terribly surprising to me and I suspect that it wouldn't be for most of you as well, but I guess what did shock me, somewhat, was just how far they would go to do so.

For the most part they would start out by interviewing teenagers and young adults out on the streets asking them all sorts of questions on their likes and dislikes, they would in some cases pay the kids for their time and take pictures of everything from their clothes to their tattoos and get just as personal with the kids as they could be. They then take this info and share it ( for a price ) with the major corporations and develop strategies as to how to market various products based on this info.

I am not against business making money on a product that everyone needs or wants, I am, however, against the methods of how they sell it to our kids.

I will give you one of the ways that they sell both a product and a band/way of life to our kids and most of the time it is subtle enough to slip under the radar while other parts of it are down right shocking.

I will not use names here because I don't need the hassle, but the scenario is real and it did happen.

A corporation owned 3 businesses that were having some problems and they were looking for a way to bring in more revenue based on those products and they came up with a brilliant idea. They would host a televised party that would feature the beverage as the sponsor, a music television show as the host and they would bring in some well known bands to play. They then proceeded to pay kids to come and dance and be "cool". The beverage that they were trying to feature was predominately displayed and the popular band was seen with the product name all over them and they introduced a new band in the process. The end result was that this beverage became the most popular beverage, the new band became world famous, and the music television show became top dog once again. Their target audience was the teenagers and young adults and it worked. From a pure business point of view it was brilliant, from a profit point they made a killing and they didn't have to spend a lot to do it.

Another method that has become popular has been through the movies and television shows. TV having advertisements is nothing new, but now you find it in every form of entertainment there is. There was a Disney movie recently that featured this princess coming up from out of the sewers right into the middle of Times Square in New York,as she pops up all you can see around her is billboard after billboard displaying corporate logos everywhere, it is a brilliant marketing move on their part, but again it was aimed at the kids and indirectly at you.

What became apparent as this went on, was just how easy it was to influence the kids.
I am not going to give you a blow by blow of all the sexually graphic ways that they present their products, via shows on spring break or on supposedly teenage shows where all the characters are sexually starved and promiscuous. What was interesting about that part was that the man who was doing the documentary on this subject came to the realization that it was the influence of these shows and marketing schemes that was turning these kids into sex crazed kids and NOT that the shows were a reflection of the culture but that they have caused the culture.

Again I realize that for most of you, this comes as no surprise and we can only sit here and wish that they had paid us to tell them would should have been blatantly obvious.

While none of what I saw was really all that shocking, it occurred to me that the one factor that was missing in all this was the parents. Where were the parents? Where was their influence in all of this? Not once was parental influence even mentioned, yet they featured kids at Daytona beach during spring break, both high school and college age and not a parent to be seen. The only conclusion that I could come to was that there is either a whole lot of orphans or the parents were not involved or perhaps, even worse,didn't care.

I quoted from Proverbs in the beginning for a reason. To ask you a simple question.
Are you raising your kids in the way that they should go? Or are you letting the influence of this world and advertisers shape your kids?

In my house we don't have cable hooked up to the TV, our children do not have their own computers hidden out in their rooms not to mention cell phones. You can say to me that I am depriving my kids of the wonders of modern technology until you are blue in the face and I will simply say to you that G-D gave my wife and I children to raise in His ways, not the ways of the world. I can't protect them from everything but I don't have to allow trash into my house when it is in my power as the adult/parent to prevent it. They still get to use the computer but we regulate their time and where it is that they go, they still watch movies and shows that we can find on line, but not without us and not without our approval.We have cell phones but again they are under parental control.

Why am I so wound about this? According to the statistics our children, with all forms of media, are hit with 3,000 advertisements a day! They are being influenced by everything from adds on the cell phones to product placements in movies and shows.
Do you want them to be the ones to influence your kids or do you wish to be the one?

G-D has given us a responsibility as parents to raise our kids. Here is what He says in Deuteronomy 6:4-7 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.

If your kids are spending 90 percent of their time being influenced by the mass media, where is the time for you to teach your kids about G-D's ways?

I know that many of you reading this have raised G-dly kids and that they have become men and women that are serving G-D with all their hearts and you should rejoice in that, but it would seem that too many others are not.

So only you can decide. Am I going to raise my children"in the way that they should go" or are you going to get a shock one day as you see something on spring break and you see your half naked child on a television show proudly displaying themselves and whatever the current product of the day is. Your the parent only you can decide to act like one.