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iQuestions Faculty, Ted Baehr 
 
 
Question: 
 
How do I teach my daughter's to dress and act with discretion when 
most of their role models don't? 
 
Answer: 
 
Children have a tough battle—and that’s a great question—because 
they have a battle with dress codes, they have a battle with looking 
good, they have a battle with peer pressure in terms of dress codes.  
 
The media quite often relies on the emotional instead of the 
intellectual. They’re relying on the sex and the nudity and the 
revealing nature of it.  
 
Actually, there’s a whole series on Public Broadcasting, on Frontline 
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/), they call 
them “Merchants of Cool,” where they interview kids and they figure 
out how to capture those most emotional moments.  
 
So parents are fighting against a lot of advertising and a lot of 
marketing that’s trying to use the baser instincts to sell their products. 
 
That said, children really want to be protected. Children want to have 
guidelines. Children want you to care about what they’re doing with 
their lives. They don’t want to be seen as being bad. 
 
Quite often—because I have a daughter, and I have boys—boys look 
at girls in their dress differently than girls think that boys are looking 
at them. They think they’re looking at “Oh, look at how cool and 
good”—and boys are looking at them a little bit more salaciously.  
 
 
 
All of this deals with having to take the time to talk to you children, 
and help them think through the consequences of this behavior. 
Consequences are very important. 
 
One doctor from Harvard said we live in a sexual epidemic. There were 
only two sexually-transmitted diseases back thirty years ago—syphilis 
and gonorrhea—and I hate to mention them, but I’m going to. Now it’s 
over thirty sexually-transmitted diseases.  
 
Kids are getting these diseases because they don’t think about the 
consequences. It starts with the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh.  
 
Help them understand this. Help them understand you don’t want to 
end up at this place, and what the consequences are of this behavior.  
 
Help them to think through that it’s not what they think about it, not 
what their best friends thinks about, but what does somebody who 
may have the wrong type of desires and propensity think about it, and 
how is it going to drive their baser instincts?  
Baehr -2- 
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