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Comments
meet at 15, marry at 17-18, sure. But I'm talking about stunting the knowledge you'd gain from just having fun with a group of friends, and lowering the heat and potential for taking young love too seriously by limiting the isolation/ escalation cycle.
Remember to play!
Do the right thing, whether anyone is watching or not.
Be married, until you are not.
Email address: angeline.greenwood@att.net
I work in healthcare. Nearly every week I come across 14-year-olds on birth control and getting STD tests. Girls coming in for their first OB check at 15 and 16. Many girls think they are mature and sophisticated at a fairly young age. You pair that with their actual immaturity and a nature that wants to please their boyfriends, and bad things happen.
Even if no sex is involved, their emotional maturity level has not reached a place where they can handle the heartbreak of serial breakups which is what happens when you start dating so young. Of course it isn't going to last. But if you elevate the crush to the level of exclusive serious relationship which is what happens when you start dating, you are investing your tender youthful heart into a relationship that is fleeting. But when you're 13, it's hard to be objective about it.
This whole concept is so alien to me but, taking what y'all are saying into consideration, I would imagine it would depend on both the child in question and the surrounding cultural climate.
So, hypothesis:
If you're raising religious kids in a marry-young, date-for-marriage kinda place, hold off on dating until they're closer to 'legal'.
If you're raising kids in a moral-but-not-religious style in a date-til-you're-35-and-perhaps-marry kinda place, let them date, but only in pg/ family friendly venues.
I'm looking for a general rule here. I'm not around young people often and I don't have kids.
@_io, A lot of your last paragraph seems child-specific. Kids mature at different rates especially if you don't factor for environment, ie city kids vs rural. Numerical age doesn't tell the whole story. There are grown people still acting like 15 y.o.'s and actual 15 y.o.'s more mature than some mothers of three. Eta: I thought you were supposed to go to a GYN after your first period, ie, 15-ish, give or take... no?
The fact that there are 15 year olds more mature than mothers of 3 says terrible things about the mothers, not good things about the 15 year olds. It's actually pretty solid science that brains are plastic and impulse control is not quite baked until the early to mid-20's. The fact that so many people paired off for life younger than that in previous generations is more due to lack of options and a society that rigidly enforced it than that they matured early. We've maybe swung too far in the other direction now by coddling young adults, but I think encouraging 13-14 year olds to play act as mini-adults in our highly sexualized culture is a mistake, one that they pay for with thier lives.
Remember to play!
Do the right thing, whether anyone is watching or not.
Be married, until you are not.
Email address: angeline.greenwood@att.net
A 13 year old having a date with her "boyfriend" at the movies would be totally innocent where I'm from. And quite common. Parents wouldn't even monitor afternoon activities like that as no one would ever think it to be inapporopriate at all. On the contrary, going to the cinema together is considered a childish activity and thus enthusiastically encouraged by parents who are worried their children could get sexualised too early.
Going out to bars and dancing venues is where it gets more dangerous. It's normal and accepted for 15year olds to go there on weekend nights and as the legal drinking age is 16 here you can imagine the fun they are having...
Teenage pregnancies happen here, too, but not in high numbers (10 out of 1000 girls under 19 years, most of them with migration background where it's considered normal and a good thing).
Apart from migration background people pair off for life in their late twens and early thirties here despite a dating culture that starts at young an age and centers around bars.
Whether we allow our children out late, go to the movies, date... or not at 13, I think the most important thing is to encourage high self-esteem, confidence and independence of peer pressure. We need to equip them with the ability to deal maturely with the challenges of an over-sexualised culture rather than solely trying to shelter them - which we can't anyway.
If you want us to be unapologetically feminine, be unapologetically masculine.
An OB check is not a GYN check. OB is specifically obstetrics.
Numerical age makes a difference. I know some very mature girls with good heads on their shoulders. But they're still girls. They're still children. Their job is to learn, but at age-appropriate levels.
You don't teach fifth grade math concepts to a first grader. It isn't only that a 6-year-old hasn't learned the more basic concepts first. A 6-year-old's brain doesn't work that way. They're still in rote memorization mode. It's how they learn at that age. The human brain isn't done when you're born. It keeps developing through the entire childhood and into young adulthood. A 13-year-old's brain is not ready to handle the hormones, decisions, and judgments required to be dating. How can it hurt to wait three more years?
Stolen from the Just for fun -Pictures thread.
I am sitting in a movie theatre by myself while my daughter an her "date" are watching a different movie.
I have to say I like kid.
"Calm seas never made a good sailor" English Proverb
"We can not fix a problem with the same level of thinking that caused it" A. Einstein
At thirteen they should have different things to spend time on besides dating.....school ,sports, learning life skills like coming , doing laundry, having fun exploring hobbies, or just spending time daydreaming.
@iceman, Awesome that you let her go, even better that you like the kid.
Protip: my mom was kinda strict compared to other moms, but she was confident that she raised me well enough to not act a fool in the street, lol. Instead, she'd let me go to whatever age-appropriate venue and then just randomly pop in to check on me. Like 'Where's Waldo' in fluffy house shoes and an overcoat. lol! This continued well into my 20's, btw.
had to think of your thread when I listened to this oldie today:
(The video is from one of Adriano's best known movies, it's got nothing to do with the song)
WHERE DO YOU HAVE THAT DRESS FROM
HOW IMPRESSIVE
TO SEE YOU WEARING IT
IF YOUR MOTHER SEES YOU
WE'LL GET INTO TROUBLE TONIGHT
IT'S WEIRD BUT IT'S REALLY YOU
14 YEARS OLD OR A LITTLE OLDER
YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED WITH YOUR BARBIE ANYMORE
FOR SOME TIME NOW
AND YOUR WALK
IS THAT OF A LADY NOW
PHONE CALLS ARE ALWAYS A SECRET
HOW MANY THINGS IN A SIGLE BREATH
AND I WOULD LIKE TO ASK WHO IT IS
BUT I KNOW THAT YOU'RE EMBARASSED
THE DOOR IS CLOSED UNPROPERLY
IN THE MIRROR YOU DO THE TRICK
AND YOU PUSH UP YOU BREASTS
AND SOON YOU'LL GO OUT AT NIGHT
IT'S THOSE NIGHTS I WON'T GET ANY SLEEP.
AND SO TIME GOES BY
AND YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE A LITTLE GIRL ANYMORE
YOU ARE GETTING OLDER
I HAVEN'T REALISED THAT BEFORE
AND SO TIME GOES BY
BETEWEEN DREAMS AND WORRIES
STOCKINGS HAVE ALREADY REPLACED
THE SOCKS
BECOMING A WOMAN IS MORE THAN NATURAL
BUT A DAUGHTER
IS A SPECIAL THING
YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND
YOU'VE ALREADY
CRIED A FEW TIMES FOR HIM
THE SHORT SKIRT AND THE
MATURITY IN SOME OF YOUR GESTURES
AND SOON YOU'LL GO OUT AT NIGHT
I WON'T SLEEP THOSE NIGHTS
AND SO TIME GOES BY
AND YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE A LITTLE GIRL ANYMORE
YOU ARE GETTING OLDER
I HAVEN'T REALISED IT BEFORE
AND SO TIME GOES BY
BETEWEEN DREAMS AND WORRIES
STOCKINGS HAVE ALREADY REPLACED
THE SOCKS
If you want us to be unapologetically feminine, be unapologetically masculine.
There is only one thing stronger than an Alpha male. That's an Alpha dad...
It's a parents role to help children grow and develop and like it or not, your daughter will be attracted to the opposite sex. My daughter is 14 and has had a couple of boyfriends. They hang out with us and we insist on them not being isolated.
I am very concerned with the thoughts of his "gf"'s parents as well, I don't want him to end up looking down the barrel of a shotgun!
Mostly it's going to events high school football games and fairs and such. I figure I can't stop it and I want to be involved to guide him to make good decisions.
Most of the 13 year olds I know are well aware they're too young to get into anything serious. The boys are at the "I like a girl, so I tease her like one of the guys" stage, the girls still think dating and romance is like Barbies, only they get to do it too. None of them are trying to find a dark corner somewhere so they can start notching their belt.
I know it's different in other places ... I remember hearing when I was 14 that one girl my age would go downtown and chat up servicemen, and another walked into a garage full of guys offering to give blow jobs. So you need to understand the local culture.
In my social circle, teens often claim to be bisexual (and do some very, very light experimenting, as in heavy hand holding) until 17 or 18. By the logic of some here, that means the kids should never go out in pairs with anyone!
If my kids wanted to date at that age, I'd be fine with it, but, as @Monkeys_Uncle said, keep to G-rated activities with parents nearby. Afternoon movies, apple picking, a mall trip ... no isolation or location bouncing (unless it's back home for a family meal).
Enneagram 5w4. I'm researching what that means, before designing t-shirt art about it.
"I feel no shame in making lavish use of the strongest muscles, namely male ones (but my own strongest muscle is dedicated to the service of men - noblesse oblige). I don't begrudge men one whit of their natural advantages as long as they respect mine. I am not an unhappy pseudomale; I am female and like it that way." RAH
I guess it depends on what you mean by "date". DW and I are in agreement that there will be no "dating" until 16 (I initially said 40, but compromised...
When I was 15 my husband and I went to the movies to meet one of his friends (his friend was 16). He decided to meet his date there too, a young 15 year old who wasn't old enough to date by herself so she had her friend come along. During half of the movie, the couple disappeared. As we were leaving, I saw his friend walking up to the theater with dirty jeans. Turns out they had gone behind one of the nearby businesses and had sex in the grass.
It just depends on how you want to raise your children. Do you want them to court or date? I think at 13 crushes should be kept to the school halls and seeing them at football games. I don't think there's a need to make it more serious to the child than necessary. I feel it might lead to them becoming too comfortable with dating while they're teens (I mean they will already have 3 years of dating experience by the time they're 16) which could lead to them becoming sexually active at a younger age since they won't be as nervous as a 16 year old who is just beginning to date.