This is the sort of post where I have to combine “wanting to continue to discuss parenting issues, because it seems like parents of teenagers get left in sudden blog blackout after learning to depend on blogging for information/commiseration during the younger-kid years” with “knowing Rob could theoretically read this, even though I assume he won’t, since he and I agree on the topic of whether we want each other eavesdropping on conversations we have online with our friends.”
Here is the situation: Rob would like to go to the movies with a girl. He and the girl are both 15, close to 16. The girl is the daughter of one of my friends. This is an interesting situation.
It hadn’t occurred to me, when thinking ahead to parenting decisions I would need to make about my children and dating, that I wouldn’t necessarily KNOW if something was a date. “May Rob date at 15?” has to be the same as “May Rob go alone to the movies with a female friend at 15?”—because otherwise, ENORMOUS LOOPHOLE.
Furthermore, speaking of enormous, have you already noticed an enormous problem with that last sentence? It’s a holdover from the time period when OUR parents were setting OUR dating rules: the presumption of heterosexuality. Which meant that anyone in a same-sex relationship could have sleepovers with a girlfriend/boyfriend, go on dates with that boyfriend/girlfriend, share a college dorm room with that girlfriend/boyfriend—because the rules were only for OPPOSITE SEX relationships. By no means was this just my parents, or just Christian parents: this was ALL the parents. I mean, it couldn’t have been literally ALL of them: somewhere there must have been parents who thought of this issue and adjusted for it. But in all my growing-up years I never heard of a situation where, for example, a girl couldn’t be alone in her room with a girl, or couldn’t have a girl sleep over, or couldn’t go just the two of them to the movies. Trying to explain this to the kids (that it was presumed not in a “MY kid wouldn’t be gay!” way, but more like in a “We don’t need to make rules about who gets to have the next turn driving the flying car” way) makes me understand a little better why an older person might give up explaining something and just say “It was a different time.”
When I was a teenager, my parents avoided the “is this a boyfriend or a friend?” issue by saying I was not allowed to be alone in my room (or alone in the house, if no one else was home) with any boyfriend or boy friend. I found this extremely exasperating at the time, even though I saw/see how such rules come about. I didn’t/don’t like how it smacked of unfairly presumed sex, with sex clearly considered a negative event: “You can’t be alone with a boy, ANY boy, or the two of you will Get Up to No Good! That’s how TEENAGERS are!” I had lots of guy friends I wouldn’t have even CONSIDERED wanting to kiss, so having to tell them they couldn’t be in my house because my parents weren’t home felt icky, and as if I were also unfairly presuming THEIR intentions.
Well, but what to put in place instead? “You can’t be in your room with anyone?” “The door has to be open?” “You can’t be in the house with friends if there are no parents home?” “You can’t go anywhere with anyone?” No rules of that sort at all?
And age plays a role: surely the rules are different for a 15-year-old than for an 18-year-old. It’s less than three years until Rob is at college and can be alone with any consenting person; it seems like we need a plan that gradually eases him into taking responsibility for his own behavior, rather than a plan that draws a firm line and then shoves him over it all of a sudden.
But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. This is not Rob asking to have his girlfriend sleep over: this is Rob asking for parental transportation to a movie with a girl whose current official status is friend. I went on my first date (non-friend) when I was fifteen; the guy’s dad had to drive us. I suppose we could have gotten into trouble if we’d been really determined (gone into the theater, waited for his dad to leave, run off, be back before the movie ended), but neither of us was at all that kind of kid at that age: we watched the movie, then went outside and found his dad. I’m inclined to let Rob go on this date/non-date, but it’s made me realize how few established rules we’ve set up. I’m afraid poor Rob is going to end up Firstborn Guinea Pig as usual (“Rule! …No, wait, that’s not working. New Rule!”), and the poor other kids will end up with the consequences of our experience. …Although, actually, it seems like we end up doing the new-rule thing anyway, since a policy that works for one kid often doesn’t fit the next kid—but at least we’ll have a policy to START from.
We allowed H and his girlfriend to watch movies in his room, but with the door open. I mean, the public bathroom to our house is right next to his room! Anyone going to pee could see in!
And they had sex in there anyway. So.
Lisa! Your comment terrified me!
That last comment makes me think: well fuck.
Maybe we will focus on respect and less on hard and fast rules. Is it respectful to your family AND your girlfriend to have sex in plain sight? (Although, I do remember those teenage hormones. They were really ration-altering.) is it respectful to lie to your parents about your relationship with someone?Just…think before acting. Maybe?
I have a couple years to perfect this. Although! I did have a chat with my eldest about the ‘don’t make me ever catch you at it’ thing. So, thanks! These posts really are helpful.
So these are my thoughts based on having been a teenager
1) I agree that rules that are different for boys and girls add a weird degree of ickiness to what might be a completely platonic friendship. This might be even more awkward for a son than for a daughter, since it could be taken in a “what does your mom know that I don’t” kind of way. And it can be so hard to even just find a friend for some kids, gay or straight, that placing limits on what gender that friend should be seems unfair.
2) I think talking to your kid about your concerns goes a long way. Tell him that you hope that if he’s dating someone, that’s something that he will tell you, because feeling secretive about a relationship can be a sign that there’s something he doesn’t feel good about. Tell him that relationships can be overwhelming and that parents set limits for their young teenagers to help keep them from getting in too deep too fast…not just sex, but it can suck like hell if you spend six months alienating all your friends because you ignore them for a boyfriend or girlfriend, and then you break up. Or if you blow off finals because you’re in a fight. And your family isn’t necessarily going to want some girl over all day every day even if they never do more than hold hands, or for Rob to be gone all day every day. Tell him that you want him to have some privacy, but not necessarily enough that someone who had taken off clothing would have time to put it back on. (Or whatever set of things happen to be true for you).
3) Trust your instincts. I bet you’ll be able to tell whether it’s platonic or not before the kids involved can.
I’m exhausted just trying to think of a rule or set of rules for teenagers that somehow strikes a balance between fair and reasonable and non-punitive, yet boundary-setting. I think my older brother (the firstborn guinea pig) must have had some sort of rules about dating/going out, at least initially, but in the end my parents just kind of adapted to whatever situation presented itself at any given time (deciding whether to let him go to the movies and if so, under what circumstances — I think one rule we had was that my parents had to meet anyone we were going to spend time with socially, which seems fair). It mostly came into play when he started driving by himself (age 16) and also had a series of girlfriends. The “no one in your room” rule gave way to the “ok to be in your room with the door open” rule, and I think they gave up on trying to set rules around who could be at our house when no parents were, because it was both impractical and difficult to enforce. With me, I had zero close friends of the opposite sex and zero dating opportunities, so none of it mattered and they didn’t set any rules for me. I didn’t even have a curfew because I so seldom went out, and when I did they were just relieved I had some semblance of a social life, and I knew to call if I were going to be late or got into any uncomfortable situations.
I think my point is that perhaps we can set expectations for conduct and try to keep communication lines open, and maybe that’s more workable than having hard-and-fast rules (which seem to only invite disobeying/poor choices to get around them/conflict between parents and kids/contradiction of own rules with subsequent kids).
I think that although the emotional fallout would be the same regardless of the same/opposite gender of a teenager’s potential sexual partner, the whole pregnancy issue would be removed in a same-sex relationship, so it would be less concerning to parents from that angle. My daughter has a friend who announced she was a lesbian, and I had a kind of weird conversation with my daughter about modesty and how this particular friend should be thought of along the same lines as a male friend when it came to disrobing in front of each other, etc. I’m not sure she quite got what I was talking about. However, now the “lesbian” friend has a boyfriend of her own, so all bets are off.
I know that your heart was in the right place with your conversation about modesty, but as a bi woman, remembering being a bi teenager, two girls changing for gym really isn’t the same thing as a girl getting changed in front of a guy. We’re going to be in the same locker room no matter what, and we’ve got the same parts – there’s not the same titillation factor that there is when it’s the opposite (and largely unknown) sex.
In high school, a friend’s mom had some similar worries, and it made things pretty awkward for a while. I had no interest in dating my friend (she was straight, for one thing), but she’d become convinced that I was going to make a pass at her at some point. We got past it, but it was tough to convey “just because I like girls doesn’t mean I like ALL girls” since neither one of us was all that direct back then.
I think this might be a take-it-as-it comes area for us because, as you pointed out, what works for one kid might not work for another. As well, I think where you live has an influence too in the sense that being rural gives you a different set of circumstances, i.e. someone has to drive for every single social interaction, than being urban or suburban where peers live closer and teens can walk or take the bus to interact.
We lived in the country and my sister didn’t have great judgement, but also most of her friends were local so she mostly went on dates in cars but came home at night. I developed a close group of friends in the city an hour away and my mom trusted me completely to look after myself, so from 15 onwards I spent most weekends away from home, sleeping at friends’ places, and they were almost all male. Neither of us had a curfew. Yet my sister (who had been permitted to have her boyfriend sleep over in her room) had a pregnancy scare at 16 and I waited to have sex until I was gone to university at 19.
So yeah, I think Lawyerish might have a good approach there – setting expectations and communication sounds like a very reasonable way to deal with different kids’ personalities. On the other hand, my sister being allowed to have her boyfriend sleep in her room overnight didn’t turn out so great, so I’m inclined to at least set a couple of boundaries…
My friend has four children and struggled mightily parenting the first three (heterosexuals), two of whom had sex while in high school. The parents were not agreeable to this at all and had tried to set boundaries but, of course, there’s always a way around the rules. The last child came out in later years of high school, several years after the oldest had finished college and moved away. Then the dilemma presented itself. What should the rules be? Was sex inevitable anyway? Was pregnancy their primary concern? Was the emotional impact of a relationship a concern?
In the end, they had a long discussion about all the issues with the youngest about relationships, the particular relationship at the moment, the rules, the rules for the older children, etc. etc. AND they had a long talk with the older children about what they’d learned. That relationship has since ended and they are still not sure (based on a few things they didn’t know at the time) their decision was the best decision.
I think you have to do what’s best at the time for that particular kid and realize you’re not perfect, they’re not perfect and hope for the best.
I feel like I should clarify this a bit more. The youngest was “friends” (as far as her parents knew) with the girl and only told them after she came out that she was in a relationship with her friend. They’d already had many sleep overs at both families’ homes. Both families were very supportive of LGBT rights and openly supportive of gay relationships, and had expressed this many times throughout their children’s lives. Even so, it was hard for the youngest to grasp her own sexuality and then be open with her family.
So, I guess my point is, and this may seem obvious but still is worth mentioning, that a child may be gay and in a relationship and having sleep overs without the parents knowing it. That is a situation worth considering.
My kids aren’t in double-digits yet, but I have thoughts! My parents had no hard & fast rules, sort of like Lawyerish, they were more situationally adaptive. I had my own vehicle (a very used truck), so I was often the driver for both friends & dates (such as they were – dating in the 90s in high school was very…informal). I had to comply with my curfew, but there weren’t a ton of rules (other than the obvious ones like “no alcohol”). I had no interest in sharing my dating life with my parents, so they only knew about 1 high school relationship & that’s because we went to the same church. Anything else, I just didn’t talk about. Going out was “with friends” and in the days before social media & cellphones, there wasn’t a good way to police this. My younger brother, on the other hand, had no interest in getting his driver’s license. He had a serious girlfriend for several years, starting at about age 16. One morning my mom got up and noticed his girlfriend’s shoes in the entry. She asked him about it, wondering how Girlfriend got home with no shoes. Uh, no, Girlfriend spent the night & was still upstairs. My youngest brother is gay & didn’t want to come out formally to my parents in high school, so most of his dating/social life was hidden from my parents. He brought a lot of girls home, but they were always just friends. I feel like all of our experiences were somehow lacking & I’d like to be more open with my boys, so this discussion is good food for thought!
I dated in high school, starting my freshman year. And I always dated older, so my boyfriend always had a car or at least access to one. My parents had the rule of no one (of the opposite sex) in the bedroom (except for my friend A, who my parents recognized as gay, probably before he did). That didn’t stop me from having sex in the house whey they weren’t home. Or at my boyfriend’s house when his parents weren’t home. I waited until I was 17, and made the decision rationally. We did “group dates” from about 6th grade on- where a group of girls would arrange to meet up with a group of boys at the movies or the mall.
I hope I’ll be the same way with my kids. Allowing them to grow up independent without being permissive. Sex seems to be inevitable, but I don’t have to make it easy for them to have sex (I’m not Dutch http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/20/teen-pregnancy-low-in-sleepover-country-of-the-net/?page=all). I plan on being very vocal about condoms- “No glove no love!”
I had the same rule at my house, no boys were allowed in my bedroom, but there were hours every afternoon my parents weren’t home, so whatever. I wasn’t actually interested in having sex in high school so I never made use of the hours my parents weren’t home, but I was well aware of the fact that I could have been doing anything I wanted at home before my parents were home from work. My parents also just let me go over to my boyfriends houses whenever I wanted and I was allowed in their bedrooms, so I just did all my kissing etc. out of the house.
My kids are still little so I have many years to think about this and I have no idea where I’ll stand on the issue. In theory I am OK with the idea of teenagers having sex when they are ready, in practice though I dunno.
I say, let him go to the movies if you would’ve let him go with a guy friend.
And continue to talk with him about relationships and sex and responsibility and all the other stuff, because you’re right, he’s going to be out of the house in 3 years.
My oldest is three and I think about this sort of thing already. It was just my mom and me and there were no rules or conversations, which is not something I’d like to replicate with my own kids. It worked for me and our situation, but I’d like better for them and our relationship. I started dating my husband at 16 and by the time we’d been together a year, sleepovers were allowed occasionally. We both still lived at home during college, but functioned mostly as adults, with jobs and cars and whatnot. So do you set rules based on place (my house), age of child or specific relationship? And what is the point of the rule? Around here, the current talk is that rules are to keep one safe, and sometimes to keep things safe. If that’s your goal, address it from that standpoint and get input from the kid in question. After all, if they help set the rules, they are less likely to try to find loopholes and be understanding of the spirit of the rule.
I would also like to add that while I’m sure things have changed in 20 years, there was no dating as such in high school and beyond. You hung out with someone, sometimes with a group and sometimes alone. And more than half of my friends were guys who I never even thought of dating. So.
And I need to start bookmarking these pages for future reference.
I realize this is the dating-rules post and not the teen-sex post, but I wanted to show you this link that might be useful in both conversations, since they are kinda linked.
“Resist the dangerous temptation to hope a kiss will just drift into something more without talking about it. Understand that ‘trying it on’ or ‘pushing your luck’ or imagining you’re correctly ‘reading the signs’ are all just polite euphemisms for being willing to risk committing a sexual assault in the hope that your feelings are reciprocated. Seriously, don’t. Every single woman I know can reel off experiences with this. Don’t be that guy. The word yes is the only 100% unambiguous yes.”
http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/a-letter-to-my-son-about-consent/
Based on what I remember as a teenager, it was pretty easy to ditch school, go to someone’s empty house and do whatever we wanted. The kids with the most restrictions where the wildest. The kids who cared the most about what their parents thought about them were the most obedient. At 15 going to the movies with a potential girlfriend/ boyfriend was exciting enough in and of itself. I’ll bet your kids are the kind who care a lot what you think about them. I had to laugh about assuming kids will be straight. I had a lot of gay friends with conservative parents who had no idea they were gay and my friends capitalized on that loophole for sure!
I think being 15 and asking for a ride to the movies with a girl probably (?) means that they are just friends. Because I CANNOT FATHOM how embarrassed I would have been asking my parents to give me a ride with a boy I liked at 15. MORTIFYING. That said, take them to the movies and then stick around in the parking lot for awhile if you really think they are planning to sneak off somewhere. My mom said when my brother and I were in high school occasionally they would follow us just to see if we were actually going where we said we were. (And we always did, b/c we were big nerds and also told on each other constantly. I can only hope my kids are the same way)
My 8th grader usually trick or treats with the same friend who he found out yesterday is going with someone else. Brainstorming other kids he might ask, I found myself wondering, if he asked a girl, would she perceive it as a date? I was baffled. But he doesn’t want to ask a girl so the point is moot. He’s young for his age socially, so this question is not probably not as imminent for me as you’d think, but I guess you never know.
I was not allowed to have any friends over when my parents were not home. And my brother and I were big on tattling on each other–so we mostly didn’t. I also think if I had anyone in my bedroom without the door open, my mom would have been on that like white on rice.
As a parent, I pretty much have started this rule–we don’t go to people’s houses when parents aren’t home, no one come here when parents aren’t home. Of course my children are 11, so I’m sure there will be some sneaking around. Oh lord, I’m feeling all icky just thinking about it–this is the part of parenting I hate–dealing with the outside world.
I agree that the key is open communication and discussions regarding respect and what drives us to do certain things in certain circumstances is best.
My father had a strict no dating rule and a strict no boys in the house rule. I remember once in middle school my best friend who came over every day of the summer while my parent’s were at work had her boyfriend visiting town (he was from another town over). I hadn’t met him yet so she brought him down to my house to hang out. The three of us spend the afternoon hanging out outside on the back deck of my parent’s house, and when my parents got home my father saw a pair of boys shoes in the back porch and completely lost it. He yelled and made them leave immediately, which was extremely humiliating.
The not dating rule also failed as soon as high school hit. I most certainly never dated and never introduced anyone to my parents since dating was not permitted. Any boyfriend interests also knew that I wasn’t allowed to date so my high school romance life consisted of absolutely everything under the sun from age 15 onward other than participating in a healthy relationship. Eventually I got caught after all of my online conversations were monitored, but nothing really stopped, that just made me be more careful not to get caught.
Although much of these things still might have happened if my parent’s had taken a different approach, I remember specifically being unhappy and disrespected that I was not allowed to participate in a healthy relationship. If this had been different, many of my relationships up to today may have been different as well.
My parents also didn’t have very many hard-and-fast rules when it came to dating/alone time with boys. Two of my best friends in high school were boys, but my parents felt comfortable letting me hang out with them alone. (Honestly, my parents LOVED both of them and probably wouldn’t have even minded if I’d ended up dating one of them.) When I wanted to hang out one-on-one with a boy my parents didn’t know (date or not), the rule was generally that the door had to stay open and a parent had to be home. That was at the beginning of high school, though–by the time I was 16 or 17 the rules had relaxed quite a bit.
My parents were also big believers in the “teach them how to have safe sex so if they figure out a way to do it behind our backs at least they’ll be ready” method of parenting. They were like that with pretty much everything–“We don’t WANT you to go to parties where alcohol is being served, but if you do make sure to never get into a car with someone who’s been drinking” and things like that.
This is a really interesting conversation! My kids are all hypothetical at this point, but I can give the perspective of a non-straight kid – even when parents know that they can’t rely on same-sex gatherings to be sex-free, they often don’t know what to do.
I was out to my parents as being bi when I was 15 or 16, before I was really dating. I didn’t have many guy friends who wanted to come over and hang out; the few times it happened, my mom asked that the door be left open, even though it was a group of us. There weren’t rules when it was just girls. We talked about it, and she acknowledged that it didn’t make sense, but since there wasn’t a reason to push it, we both just let it drop.
And I exploited the hell out of that loophole with the first person I dated. My girlfriend came over almost every day the summer before I left for college, and we “hung out” upstairs for hours on end. Since I was 17 and about ready to move 3000 miles away, it’s definitely different from Rob’s situation, though.
So I don’t have any advice, but wanted to add to the many stories of parents who don’t have good hard-and-fast rules. FWIW, I think my parents’ approach of being upfront about the dangers of STIs and pregnancy was pretty good – I definitely got the message that I should wait until I was ready to deal with possible consequences before having sex, which I think is a pretty good standard.
My mom had a rule for sex: Wait until you are 18 and use protection. She told family anecdotes which I found startling and exciting, but the fact that it was real people who I knew made hearing about their troubles was sobering and made me realize that sex wasn’t dirty/evil etc, but a complicated thing which could have very serious consequences. One of her sisters contracted HIV, and another had a baby while still in high school. For a male, there is also the legal aspects of child support, statutory rape situations, etc.
It was like she KNEW she couldn’t stop me if I was determined, but at least she could explain the best way to go about it if I really wanted to. It felt like she was talking to me like a grown up, and made me want to be responsible.
I haven’t read all the comments.
I have been involved in raising two stepkids who are now college graduates, married, homeowners — real adults. One is a lesbian. So.
Two quick thoughts — I have to admit it never even occurred to me to have a rule against “dating.” Certainly my parents didn’t, and even in that era (I am older than Swistle! I was a teenager in the late 1980s.), it was pretty much impossible (sometimes even for us, the teen maybe-daters) to know what was and what wasn’t a date.
Honestly as (step)parents our big focus, to the extent that we were focused at all (i.e. to the extent that we had a clue/plan), was about safety and respect. That did extend to things like rules about not hosting opposite-sex friends in one’s bedroom because — well, really it’s just not something that’s societally acceptable (and yes, we were aware that 50% of my stepkids were gay, though she wasn’t “out” until after she moved away from home, and no, we didn’t modify the rule on that basis at all. There’s also something to the point above about unintended pregnancy not being an issue for same-sex couples in terms of our approach to that because, yes, it was nice not to have to think about with respect to romantic relationships she pursued. Though note my use of the active voice there — there’s plenty of other-initiated interest to which gay teens are exposed and to which they can be vulnerable, including non-consensual stuff. And there can be opposite-sex experimentation, just as straight teens may experiment with same-sex. So it’s not like I’d imagine that just because someone is gay/lesbian they wouldn’t be at risk of all the same things as straight teens, because of course they might.). In the same vein (safety/respect/unintended pregnancy) we did make sure we (a) had an open box of not-out-of-date condoms in the house and that (b) my stepson knew where they were and that he should feel free to take them. I don’t think he ever did (I honestly cannot remember), but I’m a big fan of easy access to contraception.