Remembering what it was like to be a teenager is essential when you begin to navigate conversations with your child about dating and relationships. Unfortunately, parents do just the opposite. They forget how seriously they took their relationships as a teen. They forget the heart fluttering feelings of first love and the devastating, heart-rending let down when that relationship came to an end. The first love, the first kiss, and the first sexual experience are all very powerful rites of passage that stay with people well into their adulthood.
How many of us have not heard of someone who was reunited with their high school sweetheart after years of leading separate lives? Not a lifetime of marriages to other people, children, and movements across the country faraway from each other diminished the love that these two sweethearts shared. Most people are delighted by such stories and recognize an essential truth that underlies them – teens love too. Additionally, it is common for many single adults who become smitten with a new love to exclaim, “I feel like a teenager all over again!” And I am certain that there are a few of you reading this who married your high school or college sweetheart. Does the fact that you met at a young age, when you were still developing into adulthood, illegitimate your love? I think we would all agree it most certainly does not. The long-lost lovers reunited, the adults who feel like teenagers all over again, and the high school sweethearts celebrating twenty-five years of marriage should serve to remind us that teen love is real love.
All that said, parents need not roll over and play dead just because their fifteen-year-old daughter thinks she’s going to marry her boyfriend when they get older. Most likely this relationship will not last the sophomore year of high school, so parents are understandably concerned that their daughter is spending way too much time maintaining the relationship. What to do?
Well, as we know from our own experiences as teens, a full frontal attack on your teenager’s relationship is not going to work: “Sorry to break it to you, but you are not going to marry Peter someday, so better to spend Friday night studying for the SATs than going to the movies with him.” Instead, maintain respectful empathy toward the relationship, while you also set boundaries and limitations around the time your child spends with her “significant other” away from the home, out of your sight, and unfocused on her own personal goals.
Just like you should still exercise some control over how much time your teen spends working at a job, watching TV, and doing homework, you also need to exercise control over how much time your teen spends with a boyfriend or girlfriend. But be sure that you keep the focus of the conversation on time management not the boyfriend or girlfriend; otherwise, you child will feel that you are attacking her boyfriend, and in turn, she will pull away from you. For more advice on how to exercise control over your teen’s relationships without interfering or alienating your teen, check out next week’s post.
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