My step-son recently started dating a girl that he has been good friends with for several months. When he first started spending a lot of time with her, he said "Don't worry! Her mom is REALLY strict!" And... under his breath "Almost as strict as you guys are." (I have to admit that this makes me smile. I do NOT mind being the strictest parents around... because at 18 years old and in his senior year of high school, we don't have a lot of the troubles with him that most parents have with their kids this age. But... I digress.)
So... fast forward and he's now been officially dating this girl for about a week. I was away for the weekend and got a text from my husband. "J wants to spend the night at T's house. Her mother says it's fine and he'll sleep on the couch." My head pops off. It rolls across the floor. I hyper-ventilate, find my head, and respond "Uh... no flipping way!"
Someone PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me when it became appropriate for teenage boyfriends and girlfriends to sleep over at each other's houses? When did parents start thinking this was a GOOD idea? Maybe these parents weren't teenagers once because "It's okay because I'll be here all night" seems like a good bargaining chip but... you've got to sleep SOME time, right? I was a teenager. I know what I did when my parents weren't looking and it was only because I knew that they'd be looking soon that I didn't get into big messes that I couldn't handle.
I understand that I was brought up in a different time. I was brought up in a time and place when it was the very RARE occurrence that girls were getting pregnant (it happened but it was very very rare!), teenagers believed that oral sex was actual sex and was an incredibly intimate act (unlike the messages they get from movies, TV, and other kids that a blow job is the same as a back rub), and very few people were contracting sexually transmitted diseases (and that is SCARY shit!). I grew up in a time when parents set boundaries for their kids and... kids bent them a bit or worked hard to skew the rules (of course) to test their limits but they didn't walk all over them or get away with everything because the parents gave permission for inappropriate behavior or looked the other way. I grew up in a time and place where if you were doing something you weren't supposed to and someone else's parents found out, you were in just as much trouble with them as you were with your own parents and that was a GOOD thing! It taught you respect and good judgment and that you do have to answer for your actions!
I can't be alone in thinking that letting your teenager sleep at his girlfriend's house is a truly TERRIBLE idea. Can I? Relationships today move at such an insanely rapid pace that sleeping over just seems to set the perfect stage for extremely premature sex. I am not an idiot. I KNOW that teenagers have sex. But I would like to try to teach MY teenager that there is an appropriate pace to a relationship when you are that age and that putting yourself in certain situations is a recipe for bad decision-making at a hormonally-accelerated pace.
Kids these days advance their relationships so quickly because they have been de-sensitized to the seriousness of things like saying "I love you" and truly feeling it and knowing that it's kind of sacred; things like having sex when you are more ready than not (I really don't think many teenagers are REALLY ready for sex); like moving from liking someone's company at school to being in a 24/7 relationship connected by phone, text, Facebook, etc ALL the time. It moves too quickly and I think it's wrong!
We have managed to keep our teenager out of a lot of situations that could have gotten out of control and I firmly, absolutely, 100% believe that THAT is our role as parents. It's not to be the cool parents who say "Anything goes! Do what you want!". If we aren't holding in the reins for our kids and giving them the skills to develop solid, appropriate relationships then WHO WILL?!?! It's our job. It's completely thankless and we'll be the "mean" parents etc. but some day, somewhere along the way, our children will look back and realize that being their p-a-r-e-n-t and not their f-r-i-e-n-d was much more valuable in their development as a person. We have their entire adult lives to become friends with our kids but it is our RESPONSIBILITY to do absolutely everything we can to teach, guide, shelter (in some cases), prevent, and otherwise train our kids to make good decisions and be good people. Everything else is just gravy.
Please... tell me I'm not alone because most days, when I'm assigning chores, making him pay for his car insurance or telling him that he can't something that we feel isn't appropriate, I feel that we are very very alone in our parenting philosophy! Say it ain't so...
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