Gossip Girls

The other day there was a discussion on the book Gossip Girls. This book is in the young adult sections of the bookstore. The radio station put together a forum of teenage girls and asked them about the book.

See I have a daughter that will be thirteen next month, so I found this interesting.

There are several of them already in publication. So anyways, these girls were talking about these books. To them what they found that would be most disturbing to their parents were the sections about sex, and the characters parents allowing teenage drinking.

When the radio host asked the girls "do you think your parents would let you read these books if they knew what was in them?" the girls responded "no."

Although the girls did say that they didn't think that anything in the book gave them a desire to do any of those things. The girls stated, "it depends on what type of girl you are." So if you are are girl that is already interested in something like that, maybe it would give you a little push into that direction, or that if you are a girl with morals already then what you read didn't mean anything. It didn't mean that you were going to go out and do anything.

I can kind of relate to what they mean. When I was young I read some books that I thought were kind of fast back then. Not quite as fast as these books are, but left me daydreaming about kissing a boy or something like that. Well those books didn't make me run out and have sex or anything like that. I didn't agree to have sex until I was nearly 19 years old. Underage drinking, oh yes I did plenty of that though. That wasn't because I read it in a book though.

See I was not the type of girl to be encouraged by a book. Some girls probably could be though. Who knows, all I know is that I am not ready to have my daughter reading about sex, underage drinking, etc. See as parents we like to think we know our children. That we know without a doubt that they would not do inappropriate behavior without us knowing. WRONG. Even though I wasn't having sex, I did a lot of inappropriate behavior growing up. My parents, I think took it much better than I suspect that I will in similar circumstances.

For some reason my parents were very lenient with me. I did whatever I wanted to do. I never really got into trouble (caught). There were many times that I stayed out all night long never calling home. I must have scared the heck out of my parents, especially my mother. Did they know what I was up to? Did they know that I was the "town virgin" and that I wasn't doing anything sexually? Don't get me wrong, I think I had great parents, I always felt loved, my needs were always taken care of. Maybe they just knew more about me than I thought they did. Huh, I never really thought about this so deeply until now. Well anyways, lets just say that it all ended well. I managed to get through highschool and I am completely normal (well at least I think I am). I don't do drugs, rarely drink, don't smoke, heck I don't even drink coffee.

Will I let my daughter read the book if she comes across it? doubtful, at least not until I have read it. I did buy her a book at the bookstore yesterday, LOL. It was an SAT vocabulary novel by Sparknotes. It was called Vampire Dreams, and it is loaded with 1,000 common SAT words and their definitions but written as a novel so that it is more interesting to learn. Let her learn something from that, besides how to party with your girlfriends and drink alcohol. Well it must have been a good book, because she finished all 174 pages in just a few hours.

I didn't read that book before giving it to her, I assumed that a book for SAT study would be appropriate. Watch me be wrong. Oh and btw she did read the definitions at the bottom also.

Anyways, I didn't read any of the Gossip Girls' books, so just use your own judgement before letting your teenage daughter read it. I was just glad that I heard the forum so that I would be able to check the book out before giving it to her without even knowing what the contents of the book were. Good Luck.