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Digger Doug’s Underground Rocks by Apologetics PressDigger Doug’s Underground Rocks by Apologetics Press Songs written and performed by Caleb Colley. Digger Doug’s Underground Rocks is not for worship/devotional use. Join Digger Doug and Iguana Don for a rockin’ treat! Digger Doug’s Underground Rocks, a new music CD from Apologetics Press, is a collection of fun songs about science for kids. Twelve original songs...

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Headed to the Office by Glenn ColleyHeaded to the Office by Glenn Colley Spend just thirteen weeks investing in future elders in the body of Christ. This study, great for guys classes or individual study, is designed to make our young men want to be church leaders and to give them practical tools to develop the characteristics of elders listed in Titus 1 and I Timothy 3. Rich in scripture, sound...

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Pure on Purpose by Cindy and Hannah ColleyPure on Purpose by Cindy and Hannah Colley Designed for girls ages 11 and over, their moms and mentors, this series, together with its study guide makes 13 very practical lessons for girls who want to do life God’s way. Topics range from purity of thought to guarding sexual purity. It’s the lessons we’ve prayed about and worked toward for several years. Recommended...

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Amazing Migrating Animals, Designed by God by Caleb ColleyAmazing Migrating Animals, Designed by God by Caleb... For ages 7-9 Parents and Grandparents, get ahead of the game! Your kids can know the answers before their faith in God is challenged. This selection from Apologetics Press' "Advanced Readers" series explains how animal migration demonstrates God's design in nature. The 32-page book includes vivid images, fun descriptions...

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Picking Melons and Mates by Cindy ColleyPicking Melons and Mates by Cindy Colley Here it is! The children's book that's for toddlers and teens about choosing wisely. It's especially about using godly wisdom when it's time to choose a mate for life. The best thing about this book is that it has a three-week Family Bible Time Guide in the back that any parent can easily follow. The first in a Family Bible...

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The Colley House Rss

Let’s Just Edit God Out

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 17-05-2012

Category : Bless Your Heart

Tags: ,

On Monday of this week, according to Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Council, Judge Michael Urbanski, a U.S. District judge in the Western Virginia district, offered a compromise in an ACLU vs. Giles County Board of Education lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the school board for allowing a privately funded display of the ten commandment to be a part of a 12-document display highlighting the documents that play key roles in United States history. Included in the display, but not targeted in the lawsuit, being heard by Judge Urbanski, are the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, The Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.

Of course, secular textbooks and historians who admit the glaring truth that the Ten Commandments, as listed in Exodus 20, played a huge role in the development of western culture and in United States history, are abundant. In fact their principles and even their author, God, are mentioned in several of the other documents included on this wall in this high school. Therefore, I think the battle that the ACLU is waging, here and in other places against the Ten Commandments, is less about content and more about authorship. It just incenses this organization for our culture to give credence to the Good Book as having emanated from the mind of God. Giving that credence, you see, infers that He exists and that we have His Word. And–oh dear–if we go down that path, then there are all sorts of obstacles to get over to legitimize immoral behavior. Absolute truth is a big stickler for adherence and this Absolute Truth inconveniently gets in the way of homosexuality, abortion, pornography, infanticide, euthanasia, etc….So the ACLU finds itself situated uncomfortably between the truth that this document is foundational to the culture we enjoy and their expressed need to rid our public buildings of references to it’s author.

So Judge Urbanski has ordered the case to mediation, suggesting a compromise. Judge Urbanski has asked the ACLU if the ten commandments can remain on the school’s wall if they become the six commandments instead of the ten? What if the first four–the ones that mention God–are excluded? Did you get that? Let’s just clip the document in half to get rid of any mention of authorship!

Seeing how this case is resolved will be interesting. Judge Urbanski got an initial response from the ACLU. They said this edit might resolve the dispute, but still, the other six installments should not be worded, so as to infer that they are commandments. In other words, no “Thou shalt not” should be posted. Again, it’s this obstacle of absolute truth.

I’m wondering about precedence if we start chopping God out of the Ten Commandments. (It’s difficult for me to even type those absurd words.) Are we going to chop Him out of the Declaration of Independence? Will we amend the Magna Carta and the Mayflower Compact? Will we really mess with history to get around absolute truth? The problem is, the truth we chop away will still be truth. If we cut around the name of God with our measly scissors till kingdom come, the eternal kingdom will still come! If we take down plaques and edit Him out from now till the trumpet blows, it will still blow one day. Even if we take our chisels and remove His name from every marble statue in DC and from every cornerstone of every government building, His name is still the one at which every knee will one day bow. Even the knees of the officers of the ACLU… all knees under all tables on both sides of that courtroom… are getting ready to bow. Even the knees under the robe under the bench at the head of that and all courtrooms will bow.

Absolute truth is not decided in a courtroom. It’s not edited with scissors and chisels.

You can hear an audio about this case at www.libertyaction.org/7082/offer.asp.

I Didn’t Want to Know This

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 10-05-2012

Category : Bless Your Heart

Tags: , , ,

There are a few things that I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what’s under and behind my stove. I don’t want to know if there is a lizard living in my house. I don’t want to know if my adult child has purchased a package of stink bombs and I don’t want to know whether or not anyone noticed my blouse buttons were not in the corresponding holes while I was speaking in that huge assembly. Some things I just don’t want to know. I did not want to know this:

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” President Obama

Yes, he did. He did announce his support of homosexual marriages. He did become the first sitting president to do so. His rationale?

  1. He talked to friends and family and neighbors.
  2. He thought about staff members who are in monogamous, same-sex relationships.
  3. He thought about same-sex couples who are raising children together.
  4. He thought about servicemen who feel constrained.

I guess there are a few people with whom he didn’t talk and a few things he didn’t think about:

  1. He talked to friends and family, but he didn’t talk to anyone who has passed into eternity. In eighty short years, President Obama and everyone who will vote in this election will have passed into eternity. It will not matter at all there what views have been expressed by friends and family. It will matter what the Holy Spirit said about those who commit the sin of homosexuality and about those who approve the sin: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:32) President Obama, today announced that he is worthy of death.
  2. He did not think about those whose lives and families have been devastated by AIDS. Funny, as this announcement was being made by Obama, I was helping a friend, in an AIDS clinic. It is a place of quiet despondency and death. It is a place that would not exist in our city were it not for the sin of homosexuality. (It is also a place, by the way, where there are postings everywhere–literally, on just about every wall–encouraging patients to tell their social workers if they would like to register to vote. This is a place for government funded counsel, medicine, and housing for people who’ve contracted AIDS and for their children, many of whom will soon be wards of the state. It doesn’t take very long to feel the national burden of AIDS in such a place and to understand that voting for the funding candidate is important to the jobs of those who operate the free clinics.)
  3. He thought about children, but he did not think about the thousands of children who are orphaned each year because of the rampant sin of homosexuality; the sin he is necessarily normalizing by his statement.
  4. He thought about servicemen who feel constrained, but he did not think about the many servicemen and women–God-fearing service men and women– who are ever more fearful to even articulate their core religious belief about the sinfulness of homosexuality, even in private Bible studies, much less public arenas.

Why did he have to tell us? Your guess would be as good as mine. I believe he already had the votes of the homosexual population. I believe him. I believe, in his mis-guided conscience, it was an affirmation that was personally important for him. After all, if a person does not believe the Bible, and he obviously does not, then there is not one thing wrong with homosexuality, bestiality, pedophilia, infanticide, abortion, and a litany of other sins. In fact, outside the Bible, there exists a rationale for any sin, and it becomes just a matter of time until morality erodes to the level of implosion for any society. Our very first commander-in-chief, General George Washington, referred to the sin of homosexuality with “abhorrence and detestation of such infamous crimes.” His stance was not a surprise in 1778 and did not meet with dissonance in the young country. In the big scheme of things, it really hasn’t taken so long to take the moral plunge from a President drumming a homosexual soldier out of the camp in shame, to one proposing that he be honored in the sacred ceremony of marriage.

The saddest part about Obama’s statement yesterday is that it was not a surprise, either. May God help our still young country.

(P.S. Have you ever thought about the fact that the excessive government control of the current administration is intended to re-shape the moral and fiscal fiber of our nation? I mean, if we continue to make larger and larger portions of the population dependent on government clinics, housing, food , etc…for survival, and we continue to register these ever larger dependent populations to vote, then the country’s leadership will naturally evolve into socialists. In a socialist culture, self reliance, human dignity, and morality become rare commodities.)

One Pre-existing Condition

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 05-04-2012

Category : Bless Your Heart

Tags: ,

President Obama has stated that by 2014, thirty million people who have previously been uninsured will have the “right” to healthcare in the United States. Putting aside the obvious reality that someone will be paying for the “goods” that someone else is using, the fact that healthcare is not a “right” at all, but, rather, a blessing, and that the care of truly needy people is the responsibility of God’s people; not government, I am still left with a huge disconnect in my mind. President Obama wants to insure that all Americans have access to healthcare regardless of pre-existing conditions. But there were fifty million Americans who were never secure in any system of American healthcare. They were consistently denied access to life saving medical professionals and technology. They have been excluded for fifty years now from every health care initiative’s benefits. They have been denied access to even basic primary care that even people in third world countries can expect. They all had just one pre-existing condition that disqualified them from American healthcare. It’s not that they were diseased. It is not that they were at high genetic or environmental risk for health complications. The one preexisting condition that consistently kept them out of the health care system: they all lived in wombs.

Fifty million Americans, left out of the healthcare system, have died as a result of this exclusion. That’s the national healthcare crisis that alarms me most. Let’s cover the next fifty million of those people first. Let’s legislate in their behalf first. If we are going to talk about the “right” of healthcare, let’s first take a good hard look at those who are truly excluded. Not only does no one step up to insure their access to life-saving medical care, but there is no system in place for any out-of-pocket healthcare from any sources for any of these people. It’s a national travesty. Perhaps it was one or more of the fifty million unprotected dead who would have come up with the answer to the healthcare “crisis” our nation faces. God knows.

Do we really think God can bless our healthcare initiatives when they include tax dollars for killing the innocents? “In all your plans, acknowledge Him and he will direct your paths” (Proverbs 3:6) A healthcare plan void of that acknowledgement is misdirected and will fail.

Not so Saint-ly

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 12-03-2012

Category : Bless Your Heart

Tags: , , ,

Let me be the first to admit my ineptitude about sports–both in knowledge of most sports and, most certainly, in skill in any sport. But every now and then, when my son is in for a visit, I catch a blurb here and there from ESPN’s Colin Cowherd. I think he’s big on the Patriots–maybe Tom Brady, in particular; he’s not a fan of undefeated college football teams who failed to put any decent opponents in their schedules, and I’m pretty sure he has some sort of whacky divisions about deceased male movie stars going on right now. That’s about the extent of my Cowherd knowledge except for his unsettling story about the Saints last week. It seems that, even after having been warned by the NFL commissioner, some of the players continued to pay each other off for purposely injuring certain members of the opposing team (i.e.”I’ll pay you a thousand dollars if you hit ________hard enough to have him carried off the field on a stretcher.”)

“After the NFL made its investigation public Friday, former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams admitted to running a bounty pool of up to $50,000 during the past three seasons, rewarding players for knocking targeted opponents out of games,” according to ESPN (espn.go.com/new-york/nfl/story/_/id/7660902).

What was disturbing to me as I listened was both that this unconscionable bounty pool existed and the public reaction to this injury for pay. I listened, in disbelief, as I heard fans call in and say “ This kind of thing is nothing new. It’s just part of the sport of professional football,” or “That’s why American’s love pro football; violence is just a part of the excitement of the game,” or “Why do we have to suddenly punish the Saints when we’ve been looking the other way on these kinds of locker room pay-offs for years?”

I know I’m just an empty-nest mom, coming off of twenty-eight years of making sure everyone was playing fair and no one was getting hurt, but give me a break! Am I really living in a country where people, who are smart enough to dial in and talk on a national radio show, see nothing wrong with paying one another to purposefully injure other human beings in order to win a football game?

This has got to be a least a microcosm of the kind of violence that called down the wrath of God in the days of Noah:

“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence” (Gen.6:11).

A pool of funds, especially designated for distribution among those who physically hurt opposing teammates, is pretty corrupt. The defense of these paid injuries by many fans of the sport shows a national propensity for anesthetization to the black nature of human violence.

The account of Noah was one of the first that I, as a child, heard from the Holy Pages. I remember wondering what kind of violence was occurring in the days of Noah. Were people beating up on each other with their fists or were they using sharp objects to wound and kill each other? And why? Why did people want to hurt each other in Noah’s day? I’m sure it had something to do with personal gain back then, too.

As I grew older and began to teach teens and ladies from the account of Noah, I often wondered how to most practically take lessons from the account of the violence of Noah’s day. After all, most of the women in my Bible classes would never consider hitting anyone, much less seriously injuring or killing anyone. When speaking about violence, I might have mentioned the horrors of abortion or the tragedy of child abuse. Still, for most of us, those examples are from the worlds of women in vastly different circumstances from our own. I know there are exceptions, but most of us, are just not perpetrators of violence.

But here we are. We do live in a country where the guys who play in the NFL make millions. And millions of Americans are enthusiastic fans of the game. I’ll wager (okay, not wager, but venture to say) that many of you readers have little boys who love NFL football and wear somebody’s number on a jersey. It’s a huge national pleasure and that’s okay. But members of an NFL team have admitted operating a bounty pool for the purpose of injuring opponents and the NFL is planning to levy some sanctions? If you ask me, the Saints should have their franchise pulled yesterday and be forced into the annals of once great NFL teams. Football is a sport. Here’s the definition of sport:

An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

Did you get the purpose of a sport? It’s just entertainment. Yet, here we are…raising our kids in a society that very nearly worships at the stadium or in front of ESPN and bows down before the latest and greatest quarterback. It’s difficult for me to fathom that articulate worshippers have been led in the frenzied congregation to the point of verbally excusing and even supporting their icons in pay-per-view for pay-per-violence. But moms, mark it down: We’d better start early to teach our children that sports are merely entertainment forms and all entertainment is optional. We’d better make sure they know that sports are a distant second or third to spiritual activities when scheduling conflicts arise. We’d better let them see us using sports as opportunities to evangelize and to learn the value of fair play rather than sacrificing our values for the win at all costs. We can use the examples that come around each week– from the atrocity of the Saints’ behavior, to the common abuse of steroids, to the ethical issues surrounding recruiting, to the simple lessons of sportsmanship on the Little League field–to teach our kids some very practical lessons about life and godliness, or we can let those issues teach our kids that sports trump the spiritual. But we had better get ready for some dialog with our kids about sports and the relative unimportance of the games, because the devil really wants your kids to worship at the altar of some false god–and the idol of football is about as good to him as any other. I hope your family and mine can have fun at the stadium, the diamond, the court, the field or the rink without spiritual compromise. If we can’t, we should stay away.

“And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire” (Matthew 18:9).

“ObamaCare” – Do Those Two Words Go Together?

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 23-02-2012

Category : Bless Your Heart

Tags: ,

The problem is, he doesn’t — care I mean. In the name of science, he and other liberals have bought into some very volatile and ever-evolving theories out there about climate change that are neither credible nor within the management realm of governments. But at the same time, the same leaders refuse to examine or else choose to reject the real and amazing scientific and medical advancements of the past four decades that show us, now in colorful, three dimensional, digital, sound-accompanied detail the intricacies of life in the womb. No-one can deny that it is life. It is moving, ingesting, pumping, sucking, feeling, hearing, genetically complete life. Thus, the massive, legalized, government-funded destruction of it is a tragic genocide, the likes of which outruns the horror of that inflicted by the Nazi regime of the previous century. Where do you read the word “care” in that scenario? He doesn’t really care about life.

He doesn’t really care about freedom of religion. It’s outraged the whole Catholic world that he has mandated that businesses provide birth control insurance for their employees. It should outrage us all! Many women opt for methods of birth control that are abortifacients; that is, they, to one degree or another, serve to prevent the development and birth of eggs that have already been fertilized. They (the abortifacients) destroy life. Included in the coverage of this insurance that Mr. Obama would force business owners to provide would be the “morning after pill” (now available as recently FDA approved Ella or as RU-486), a drug that is toxic for eggs already fertilized. (The new Ella pill is even worse than RU-486 because it can be used for longer periods of time following intercourse and it works during more times of the month.) Mr. Obama would force business owners, including religious universities and hospitals, to violate their consciences and, in many cases, go against the teachings of their respective churches in order to comply with this insurance mandate. This sort of federal infringement on conscience and religion is unprecedented. Up to this point, pro-life citizens have not been happy about the legalization of murder to the unborn. But, heretofore, we have not been forced to participate. This amazing piece of legislation would, for all practical purposes, force pro-life business owners to pay for abortions. This represents a change from our government allowing us to support or participate in the practice of abortion to its forcing our participation.

And if you think he has been pretty bold about “social” change, just wait until he starts governing without an election looming in his future. I believe he will care even less. There will be no motivation after next November for him to cater to the electorate on both sides of the fence. His agenda will not be hindered by his need to pacify the moderate swing voters. I don’t like to be political in my writings. but I am morally bound to speak for the unborn who cannot speak for themselves. I am spiritually convicted that I must contend for an atmosphere in America in which our religious freedoms are defended rather than slowly (or not so slowly, in this case) eroded. If what I have frequently and passionately defended from a spiritual viewpoint becomes a political hot-button issue, I will keep on saying the same truth. While politically hot issues rise and wane, truth does not evolve. There are lives at stake– lives which will never be given the right of voice or vote. Further, once our freedom to behave as we’re convicted is usurped by government, reclaiming it has historically required the shedding of even more innocent blood.

Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that “if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom,” it is a very serious consideration … that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

I didn’t write the previous paragraph. It’s from the lips of Samuel Adams in another century. What Mr. Adams didn’t know was that the “miserable sharers” were destined to include not only the “yet unborn,” but literally millions never to be allowed even the initial human right of birth and life.

Religious institutions have been given an extra year to comply with the mandate of ObamaCare regarding birth control. That’s enough time if we get freedom’s message out before November. I will not suffer the attack tamely. How about you?

February’s Digging Deep in God’s Word Nugget Night Podcast will be Sunday, February 26th at 7:15 p.m. http://thecolleyhouse.org/digging-deep-in-gods-word

"Gossip Girls" and More…

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 08-12-2011

Category : Bless Your Heart

Tags: , ,

Two different preachers who are very alert about the battle the devil is waging for our families recommended that I read a Fox News article last Monday about current television and our kids. More specifically this article was about certain types of programming that parents may think is benign enough for teens and younger kids, when, really, it’s far more dangerous than it appears. People like me, who get to speak often to teens about guarding the media’s influence in their worlds are sometimes in a catch 22: We want to warn them about specific shows and their harmful factors, but we really don’t want to go and watch the filth so that we’ll be apprised enough to issue informed judgments.
So I found this article personally helpful. These are shows that I’ve heard advertised and, some of which, I’ve heard young people discussing. I must say, that, when parents are in the loop, as Christian parents should be, these shows are probably not on the viewing agenda. I would add, too, that these shows are certainly not exclusively the harmful ones on current TV. I really hope I’m writing to some moms who, along with their husbands, have already made judgments to severely limit television viewing in their homes. I hope you’re ahead of the game in that you’ve also excluded a whole array of programming that may not be considered as subtly dangerous as the programs mentioned in the article, but which should be offensive to those who have pledged allegiance to Christ; shows which contain cursing, other kinds of offensive language, the acceptance of homosexuality and shows that poke fun at religion and particularly at Christianity. I hope that I’m writing to some moms who are very fearful of even today’s reruns. Shows like “Friends” and “One Tree Hill” and even some episodes of “The Office” and “Everybody Loves Raymond” and lots of others that are now showing in the afternoons and are available in boxed sets at the video store contain immorality and should still be offensive to Christians. 
The devil has largely succeeded in taking away the shock factor that many parents once felt about the entertainment fare presented on network television. He has moved what the world would consider inappropriate TV so far into the bowels of raunch that, somehow, even the children of God have moved their standards of acceptability into programming that thirty years ago would have offended our consciences. It’s a process, but the devil loves it when he can get our standards to follow suit, albeit a few years, behind those of pop culture. The devil is patient and cunning. He doesn’t really care if your facebook page shows that you are into “Gossip Girl” (current filth) or “Sex and the City” (filth in rerun form). He just loves undoing the transformation that renewed our minds in the first place and getting us back to the conformity that keeps us in the world (Romans 12:1-2). 
Here’s the article. I hope it makes you fighting mad at the devil, or seriously sad at the state of American entertainment, or protective in the extreme of your kids, or that it gives you a clearer vision to put eternity in their hearts, or that it spurs you to adopt a more hands-on approach to parenting. Whatever it takes to make us all wake up and say “Enough, already!”  from that screen in the living room–the one that keeps getting bigger and bigger, both in inches and in damning influence to our homes–whatever it takes, may we become convicted enough to fortify the borders around the souls of our kids.

What Are the Most Dangerous Shows Your Kids Are Watching Without You?

By 
Published December 05, 2011 | FoxNews.com 
‘Teen Mom’ Star Amber Portwood and daughter Leah at the MTV reality series finale.
With more devices than ever that stream television content — including iPads, smart phones, computers, and plain old TVs — the ability of parents to police their kids’ viewing habits has eroded significantly. This can be particularly concerning to parents who don’t want their children watching television shows featuring sex, drugs, and violence, with nary a consequence in sight.

Such shows aimed at younger audiences are often broadcast during the afternoon and evening, when children and teenagers can watch shows without parental supervision, and are often available online at any hour.

The Center for Media Literacy, an educational watchdog group that seeks to help parents navigate media with their children, works to bolster media literacy for kids so they can better navigate television content without a parent present.
“When kids have the skills they need to process and understand how media works, they are much better prepared to deal with whatever they come across,” Tessa Jolls, the President of the Center for Media Literacy, told Fox411.com. “We do feel strongly that kids have to develop an internalized filtering system.”

(The five questions parents can coach kids to ask about television shows is available on their website.)

Fox411.com asked parenting experts and television watchdog groups what are the most dangerous shows aimed at young people out there today, and why parents should be wary of them.

Gossip GirlThe CW’s Gossip Girl has been testing the boundaries of television decency since it began airing in 2007, most notably with their controversial three-way sex scene between two of the show’s characters and guest star, former Disney Queen, Hilary Duff. But theses stunts aren’t the main beef experts have with the show. Rather they are concerned ‘Gossip Girl’ creates a false and dangerous expectation of what a teenager’s life should be like.

“These kids are going to strip clubs, they engage in casual drug use and there are no consequences. The parents are essentially missing in action on that program,” Melissa Henson, the Director of Communications for the Parents Television Council, told Fox411. “Television is influential in the life of a teen because it sets a teen’s expectations of what is expected and what is normative, so when they see kids near their age engaging in this behavior, they begin to think it is normal.”

The Secret Life of the American TeenagerThe ABC Family show about the unexpected pregnancy of a teenage character actually trumped ‘Gossip Girl’ in the ratings for its season one finale. Critics say the show has strayed from its early message about teenage pregnancy.

“When it was originally created it was intended to be a cautionary showing a teenage girl who gets pregnant the first time she has sex, but for something that is supposed to be a cautionary tale it plays like a soap opera. The issues simply are not dealt with in responsible ways on that show,” Henson says.

American DadAnimated prime time television shows should always raise red flags for parents. Because they are cartoons, and on during Sunday night prime time, they are often assumed to be family-friendly fare, but shows like “Family Guy” and “American Dad” can be anything but.

“Those adult-themed cartoons often hit the lowest-common denominator of obnoxious and offensive humor and sex and perversion are common themes. Children who stumble across such programs are exposed to topics that are very family unfriendly,” says Dan Gainor, the Vice President of Business and Culture for the Media Research Center.

Two Broke GirlsThe new CBS comedy about two twenty something ladies who find themselves in dire financial straits has some critics concerned over its raunchy story lines. “Some references with a high yuck factor include chatting about vibrators and jokes about sexual functions,” says Ellen Rittberg, the author of “5 Things Your Teen Won’t Tell You So I Will.”

American Horror StoryRecent plot lines on FX’s new sexy thriller “American Horror Story” have included finding jars filled with dead baby parts, vivid depictions of murder, nude scenes and sexual assaults. The show comes with the MA rating for mature audiences only, but because it was created by popular high school musical drama “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy, some teens may tune in.

“Repeated exposure to bloody and dead bodies and specifically showing a criminal in the act of killing someone through time diminishes or eliminates the horror the viewer may have had (and the revulsion) upon the first viewing,” Rittberg says. A rep for FX countered: “American Horror Story and our original programs are made and intended for adults. They are rated TV MA, and they air at 10 pm.”

Teen Mom, 16 and PregnantMTV loops shows like “Teen Mom” and “16 and Pregnant” during the hours when kids get home from school and may not have adult supervision. While the premise of these shows is to show the difficulties of teenage moms, the problem experts have with them is that they more often focus on the drama in the girls’ lives rather than the negative consequences.

“Most of the focus is on a fight the girls have with the baby daddy or whether Amber should get a new tattoo, not so much about how hard it is to take care of a baby. It is very appealing and very dangerous to teenagers for that reason,” Henson tells Fox411.

Dr. Susan Newman, the author of “The Book of No: 250 Ways to Say It, and Mean it and Stop Pleasing People Forever,” says parents just need to be authority figures when it comes to what their children are watching and downloading. 

“The titles of these shows alone should be an alert to parents. ‘Gossip Girl,’ ‘Teen Mom,’ ’16 and Pregnant,’ etc. What possible messages can they convey? My point is: a parent’s job is to protect their children,” Newman says. “We have become such a culture of ‘yes parents’ that we can’t say no to them, not even to TV programs that may have limited or very little social value. Parents would be doing their offspring a great service by turning off the TV to questionable shows.”
Please visit Cindy’s Blog at cindycolley.blogspot.com/

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