When a former Disney child star gets nasty, it's bound to draw some attention.

When that star is Miley Cyrus, the Internet can chatter of little else for days.

Her infamous performance on MTV's Video Music Awards featured her dancing in a teddy bear-adorned teddie, tongue hanging out, before stripping down to nude undies and gesturing unsubtly with a large foam finger. She shared the stage in a memorable fashion (as in, hard to unsee) with musician Robin Thicke, who sang part of his "Blurred Lines" summer hit.

Besides out-of-touch grown-ups having to explain "twerking" to one another, why does Miley push our buttons so? After all, the VMA stage is where Madonna and Britney Spears shared their open-mouth kiss years ago. It's where celebrities actively try to provoke us.

And Miley was trying so hard.

She's one of the most commercially successful child stars born of the Disney machine. The merchandising, movies and platinum albums have made her one of the richest young celebrities, worth an estimated $120 million.

Thicke's hit was an apt anthem for Miley. She's been blurring the lines between girl and woman for a while now. For those whose children discovered her when she was 12 years old and playing Hannah Montana, her public transformation has been rocky. The road from wholesome to whorish will have some awkward turns.

And awards shows have become modern-day morality plays.

The commercials during the Super Bowl; the jokes, outfits and snubs during Hollywood's awards season; the over-the-top performances at the VMAs: These are the cultural touch points that give the rest of us a chance to bestow our approval or bellow our outrage.

When performers push the envelope, the collective pushback is a societal indignation reset button. Clearly, she pushed too far. If there are standards of taste and acceptable public behavior we wish to impart, the widespread mockery of Miley offered tweens and teens a textbook lesson in what not to do. Parents who made the questionable decision to watch the show live with young children may have had to flip the channel or endure an embarrassing moment.

Asking a young viewer, "Why do you think she wanted to perform that way?" might lead to an interesting conversation. Shocking an audience with a tawdry show is not the only way to garner attention. Perhaps Miley sees it as her only way.

At the end of the day, Miley's goal is to sell more stuff. Whether or not this stunt helps or hurts that cause has yet to be determined. But it's a good reminder to parents that pop culture icons are never reliable role models for our children. Even the Disney-scrubbed versions grow up and struggle to define themselves.

Her spectacle also raised the question of whether we would be as scandalized by a young male star performing as suggestively. Both male and female stars have used their sexuality as a blunt object. If the reaction was any harsher because of her gender, it's largely because the performance failed.

In that blurred space between sexy and vulgar, she gyrated her way into the latter. In the blurred space between provocative and pitiful, she left the audience feeling a little sorry for her.

The Martinez family sat outside on picnic tables in the Texas heat, temperatures rising above 100 degrees, and listened to the story of how some of the refugees made it to this country.

Megan Martinez, 33, studied the murals painted on the fence next to them -- portraits of people who had traveled by packed trains through South America. At various points, the shelter director explained, people would throw food on the train so the passengers could survive until the next stop.

Megan's 17-year-old stepson, Holden, was absorbed in the story told by the director of Casa Marianella in Austin, Texas. Later that evening, Holden would be cooking dinner for the families staying at the shelter. He would take special care to make the spaghetti sauce from scratch for them.

Megan describes this moment of their family vacation as life-changing.

"Seeing my kids understand the system, learning about how people come to live here because it's not safe to live in their own country, seeing the wheels in their heads turning ... as a parent, that was huge."

This was the second summer the Martinezes, who live in the St. Louis area, embraced the idea of vacationing for a good cause. As part of their annual 10-day summer vacation, each family member -- Megan, husband Chris, 41, and their three children, ages 17, 9 and 8 -- took a role in planning a different volunteer project. They drove from St. Louis to Texas and worked on six service projects during the trip. They helped sort donations at a distribution center for the Joplin School District in Missouri. In Dallas, they took down a sunflower display at Peace Community Gardens in preparation for its move to a new location. In San Antonio, they worked a Family Fun Night at the San Antonio Museum of Art. They cooked and served dinner at the refugee shelter in Austin. And they painted and assembled temporary huts for people still living in tents after this summer's tornados in Oklahoma City.

Holden said he got to practice his Spanish while talking to residents at Casa Marianella, and it changed his perspective on the sorts of problems that come up in a typical, middle-class American high school.

"It was kinda cool how they could be so positive and so happy despite all they had been through," he said.

Chris Martinez, who works as the chief development officer for Catholic Charities, and Megan, who works as the recreation director for Missouri's Veteran's Home, are naturally service-oriented people. They wanted to find ways to foster the same spirit in their children and discovered that the family vacation was an opportunity to combine relaxation and volunteering. Each family member researched organizations in advance, then sent emails to see if there were opportunities for the family to help out for a few hours during their visit.

"You can walk out after performing a project and not have to say anything," Chris said. "What they witnessed is so much more powerful than anything my wife or I could say."

It wasn't always easy to follow through on the commitments they had made while planning. Some ideas sound great in theory and feel more challenging in execution.

The night the family arrived in San Antonio, they visited the Riverwalk and enjoyed a late dinner. No one got much sleep, and they did tourist activities the entire next day in the heat. That evening, they had committed to working a family fair night at the local art museum.

"If we were in full vacation mode, we would have probably done nothing. Sat in the A/C, maybe gone to get some ice cream," said Chris. "Getting ready, everyone was very quiet. It was clearly not what people would have chosen to do in that particular moment."

But once they arrived, the energy from the crowd and the event lifted them. The times they would have rather slept in or spent an extra hour by the pool were outweighed by the payoff of being involved in the local community in a way they couldn't be as tourists.

Holden met a man from Colombia at the refugee center and they found a soccer ball at the house. They played soccer together for an hour in the backyard.

His father said they go to their different projects with the intent of giving to others. But invariably, people keep giving back to them.

I took one last look in the empty backseat and saw a vision of double car seats.

It's been years since those strapped-down seats left indentations in the leather. The backseat, now spotless, never looked so clean during the car seat years. Even when our daughter outgrew the front-facing seat and graduated to a booster, and when her brother caught up with a booster of his own, it was never a clean car.

Once, I offered a ride to a couple of colleagues when we were headed to lunch. I tossed aside one of the boosters to make space, and was so personally disgusted by the crumbs, spills and stashes of whatever the children were collecting at the moment that I had to lay something down for my co-worker to sit on.

It was that kind of car -- covered in the filth of babyhood, then childhood.

The "classic silver metallic" Prius was pristine, of course, when I fell for her nearly seven years ago. I knew she was the one before I laid eyes on her. I was already sold on the gas mileage, and my last car had been totaled in an accident. Back then, she was still a bit of an oddity in the heart of the Midwest, and people would stop to ask me questions about her in parking lots.

I bragged about the 50 miles per gallon whenever I had the chance. I had been warned of the dangers of "smug pollution" that came with driving this hybrid, but I didn't care if I fell victim.

My children were on the cusp of those busiest chauffeuring years when we got her. Soon enough, she was carting them to preschools and piano lessons and Sunday school and practices. Parents of children of a certain age spend many of their waking hours in a vehicle.

Pri was a reliable companion. We criss-crossed half the country with her. Despite the ever-present evidence of small children inside, I took care of Pri like she took care of us.

When I crossed the 100,000 mile mark, I took a picture of her odometer the same way I documented the children's kindergarten graduations. Even before this milestone, my husband had started suggesting perhaps her time had come. I bristled at the idea.

I didn't need a new car. I preferred to drive this one. Maybe not forever, but certainly for many more years. For the better part of a year, I resisted, and the car became a standoff.

Humans can form attachments to objects, and we are especially susceptible to vehicles that symbolize our freedom, express our identities and transport our precious cargo.

I remember the black Caprice Classic of my childhood, a boat of a car with a rear window space large enough for a small child to lie down in, pressed against the glass. (It was an era of lax child seat safety, I suppose.)

It wasn't just Pri that I loved. Her history was inextricably tangled with the story of my kids' childhoods. For more than 107,000 miles we inhabited this compact space together.

Maybe I wasn't ready to let that go.

But rationality bested sentimentality, as it rightfully ought to in matters of safety.

Earlier this month, I took Pri to a Toyota dealership. Like a man with a midlife crisis, I was literally trading in my steady, faithful companion for a newer, fancier model.

The heated seats and HD radio felt more like a betrayal than a bonus.

I told the salesman and finance guy to make sure she went to a good family. They humored me as they closed the deal.

I filled a couple of Ziploc bags with the loose clips, pens and papers I forgot to take out of the dash.

I took two pictures of her before I walked away. Then I drove off the lot in another Prius.

If she lasts as long as her predecessor, she'll be the one that sees my girl move from the back seat to the front -- and the day soon after, when she takes the wheel.