A familiar scene happened earlier:
Girl Teenager:
Mom, why don’t you want me to have a boyfriend?
Parent:
Cause you’re too young, you’ll meet a lot of guys while you grow up and use your time to finish your studies not finding a mate.
Girl Teenager:
11 years old is young, 15 years old is not. 8 years old is too young, 15 years old is not. A mate is not a boyfriend – there is a difference.
Parent:
The answer is still no.
Girl Teenager:
Would you rather I have a girlfriend?
Parent:
[goes ballistic]
How many parents face this every day? Every year? It’s worse than the sex conversation. It’s the “relationship conversation”. In fact it is the “please don’t get pregnant before you finish college” and the “don’t be a teen-age mom” conversation wrapped in between the lines of “finish your studies first”. For some parents it is the “don’t make me a grandmother yet” conversation.
It’s like once you get your college diploma (and get a job), you can “officially” have a meaningful relationship. The problem is, by that time, you’re more concerned with earning money and getting out of your parents’ place rather than creating meaningful relationships.
I’m not saying that all teeners should just go out and get a boyfriend/girlfriend, forget studies and have joyful sex etc. I’m not saying that all relationships end in sex. Well, some do and most of them don’t – but that’s not the topic.
The topic? Teen-age love. It’s when they fall for the first time. Teen-age love/lust, along with a lot of relationships created during your grade school and high school years, last all the way till adulthood. Some blossom into healthy friendships. Some become baggages that reek of guilt, lies and hurt.
Teen-age love. We get so giddy and feel it is “romantic” when we see kids have their first love which they carry 40 – 60 years later. But get aghast and freak out when our 15-year-old son or daughter say, “I think I found the girl I want to have a relationship with.” We get so weak-kneed when we hear a guy say “I think I found the girl I will marry”, yet ground our daughters the moment we hear that they had a boyfriend behind our backs.
Teen-age love. How do you answer questions like these? What do you do?
Chances are they will just do the opposite of what you say and just have that “secret boyfriend/girlfriend”. They’ll just tell you about it 20 years later when they’ve mustered enough courage to confront you about it.
Teen-age love. Just like sex, it has to be dealt with sooner or later by any parent. It doesn’t matter if the kid is a genius, normal or has special needs. They will all go through it and there’s no single answer or solution to it all.
Or is there?
