I have to give my first Toastmasters Speech tomorrow and I'm scared, I announced at dinner last night.

Everybody gets scared Mommy. It's okay to be scared. But, brave is when you are scared but you do it anyway. What's your speech about? Ainsley advised.

Me, I have to introduce myself and talk about me for 5 minutes.

I have two blogs and I write about my daughter and my son. I love my children. I'm a good mother. I have a husband who works at a chicken company. I have nice parents and two brothers and a sister. I'm pretty and I have short hair and blue eyes. I'm a writer. I have red couches and I'm a good decorator and a great cook. I love to exercise and I teach my children to exercise. I teach my children to read and write and their numbers and do projects with them. I'm a painter and I can sew. I go to church. I love yoga. I read a lot and love books. I love to dance. Just say that and you'll be fine, she told me.

At least I know she's been listening.

B-R-A-V-E

Soccer season is over.

Ainsley played on a local church league this year. No scoring, no winning, only one team to play against.

I think we'll consider putting her in a competitive league next year. I see no point in pretending not to keep score. Our team knew we lost every single game.

Why do we keep insisting children are stupid or not paying attention? Why do we attempt to teach them the wrong lessons? We live in a Capitalist Society - if you think winning isn't important here - YOU haven't been paying attention.
Winning IS important and we should teach them how to try their best to WIN.

I did not coach because I think she is less inhibited and shy and has more fun without me there. Coaching my own kid was quite frustrating for me.

Soccer is MY favorite sport for girls because there is lots of actual exercise (unlike baseball with it's endless waiting) and it's gender neutral.

Also, I think Ainsley has an aptitude for it.

She says she wants to try gymnastics over the winter instead of going back to Taekwando. I'll let her if it isn't cost prohibitive.

10 Antidotes to Self-Objectification

Sharks v. Happy Feet

I just read my "marketing bio." If you're reading this Empowering Girls website then I'm guessing this is also your "marketing bio." We're the new purchasing demographic called "Thinking Parents" and we're raising the marketing target called "Smarty Kids."

Our vulnerable spot where we'll "spend heavily?" To keep our kids "safe and happy" and there are 32 million of us.

Straight from a press release:

Smarty Kids: there is a growing population of kids today that we call Smarty Kids:

* these kids are tech-savvy and appreciate substance to their media encounters.

* Smarty Kids benefit from their parents’ dual income and digital awareness.

* they enjoy learning from experience and are physically and socially active.

Thinking Parents: those moms and dads entering the crucial elementary to tween years when peers begin competing for influence.

• 32 Million moms are online

• Parental Supervision on the computer is high

• They spend heavily on their tween to keep them safe and happy

What’s on the mind of a Smarty Kid:

• Having the coolest gadgets and games

• The pressure of fitting in with their peers

• Mild environmental and ethical issues

• Being entertained and engaged

Smarty Kids on technology and media:

• Have available access to technology and media platforms, with some having personal technology in their bedrooms.

• Access a computer both at home and at school and spend more time online than any other childhood group.

• Interact with more forms of media than their peers, from paper and ink to television to online to mobile.

Our average income is between $56 and $76, we're likely college graduates, live in cul-de-sacs and we're upward bound. We're likely between 35 - 44.

I often hear this from frustrated parents: "It won't matter if I write the company or if I refuse to buy the product. I'm just one parent."

Except that you're not. You're 1 of 32 million Thinking Parents with 2.5 Smarty Kids, who is taking the time to let the company know what products you want to spend your money on.

Want that toy kitchen in a neutral green (as opposed to the pink) so your toddler boy can learn to be a good husband and father and oh, I don't know - feed himself without growing up thinking an ability to cook to feed one's own self makes one gay? Write the company and tell them, "I'm a Thinking Parent and I would buy this for my two male Smarty Kids if it were in green or yellow."

This press release signals a changing tide in the children's toy and media market. This Christmas, with it's more stressful economy, will also work in the Thinking Parents' favor. Rather than wantonly spending money on every whim our children have, we'll be more choosy about the message, about the quality, about the meaning and the profit margin. The toy & media companies are poised to work harder.

They know we're out here making conscious decisions and they are willing to meet our values to get our money.

What questions will you be asking of the companies you spend your Christmas budget with?

Photo Source: This Smarty Kid is named Sarah and she lives and breathes soccer. Her mom Ellen Gerstein is a Thinking Parent over at "Confessions of an It Girl.

One of my goals, as a parent, is to teach my daughter coping skills and practical techniques for dealing with stress.

Personally, I've found yoga to be instrumental in building a core strength, core inner self and self worth, stress reduction and in communing with God.

Of course I want her to have access to skills like this before she hits adolescents and all the negative coping strategies become available to her.

I used to use negative strategies like smoking cigarettes, experimenting with drugs, defining my self worth by boys and men, and a daily diet of Wellbutrin and Xanex. One of my primary objectives is to prevent the adoption of those.

Over the summer I've been practicing yoga listening to Elsie Escobar classes on iTunes during Zack's nap. Sometimes I invite a friend. Sometimes I encourage Ainsley to try a few minutes.

She posed for these photos and then got bored before we moved out of the sitting pose. A fascination with the incense stick took over and she sat near me waving it through the air like a 4th of July sparkler.

The next afternoon I came out of the shower and found her teaching her friends yoga with a DVD, lit candles and burning incense.

Ssshhhh, Mom, we're having our relaxing quiet yoga time.

The APA's Report on Sexualization of Girls recommends teaching your children a way to center themselves, meditate, pray, and view one's body as having value beyond its appearance, beyond male entertainment. Yoga does that for me.

Hopefully, you have healthy coping methods that center and ground you and hopefully you're finding ways to teach those to your kids.

Teach what YOU know.

The Olympics are always an exciting time, to see those teenagers and early adults become the best in the world. It's awe-inspiring.

I want to do that! Ainsley said about her newest Heroine Gou Jing Jing.

Those children train every day from the time they are 3 years old for hours and hours. They don't go to regular school, they practice and practice and practice every single day. Their parents spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on training, I told her.

Oh, I don't want to do that, she said.

All that sacrifice - of youth, of fun, of childhood - makes me want to cry when one of them gets injured at the last minute and can't compete, like poor Chellsie Memmel whose ankle was injured and then she fell from the parallel bars during the qualifying round.

Listening to the bios you realize that, at least at first, shooting for the Olympics is a parental dream. Or, in the case of China, the State's dream.

Some of the Chinese girls were required to leave their family lives to train for the Olympics because they were inherently extra bendy and flexible or showed innate swimming skills when young.

Some say this is unfair, but my husband says, they were saved from a life of being farm or factory workers.

He has a point.

Some of the American athletes have parents who were Olympians. Mom or Dad won Gold - talk about pressure.

On the bios I heard that many of these teenage girls left their homes to train and one admitted that she has no friends outside the team.

What do you think? Does watching the Olympics make you want to sign your kid up for some hard core training?

The Olympics have served all of us in our lives as a source for some pretty good heros and role models.

Who doesn't remember Mary Lou Retton?

Watch with your kids and talk to them about what kind of discipline, practice and dedication becoming the best at something takes.

We watched the trials for a little while and actually saw 4 or 5 world records set. Even speaking to kids about their "personal best" which announcers mention a lot is invaluable.

Head on over to Weary Parent and get the lowdown on all the accomplished teenagers.

Then bop over to Char's Sports Girls Play to find a good athletic challenge for your daughter.