Parents Rules on Teenage Dating

I feel a lot on parents' rules on teenage dating depends on your child and what you call dating. I personally call dating going out to the movies or anywhere else together without any parents or escorts. Some of my 13-year-old daughter’s friends at school have boyfriends and the most they ever do are hold hands at school. They rarely even see each other after school. 

Now some of them do take it farther, sometimes at school or after school, but there is a difference between having a boyfriend and dating. The scary thing is that some of these kids hide that they have boyfriends from their parents because there is no communication between their parents and them. Their parents don’t want them dating at all, so they go behind their back. Then these kids go somewhere after school and hook up with this boy and the parents have no idea. 

My daughter has never had a boyfriend behind my back! She has always asked my husband and me before going out with a boy and we have always sat down and talked to her about it before she has given her answer back.

We have always let her go out with the boy, but we set the ground rules. She has never broken them yet and they are always a little different depending on the boy. She broke one of her own rules of not dating a boy from her own school this year.

She went out with an older boy. She said it was different because he wasn’t in her class. So, Her dad and I talked a lot because he was two years older then her and finally decided that it would be better that she does it with our ground rules then do it behind our back.

We set down a lot of ground rules, then it only lasted two days. He talked to her like she was his property and she didn’t like it. Good for her, I have raised her right. She hasn’t had a boyfriend since and is fine with our decision of not letting her go out on a date without parent supervision until she is sixteen.

She went out with him because of the peer pressure from the other girls at school. They all had a school boyfriend and wanted her to have one too. She said it was a big mistake, and understands why we make the rules we do. They are to keep her from making stupid mistakes. I sure am glad that my plan didn’t backfire on me. I didn’t think that she could put up with him very long.

My daughter’s rule of not dating boys in her class came about when too many of the girls would get dumped by the boys in her class, then the boys wouldn’t be their friends anymore. She couldn’t handle it if she couldn’t go and play basketball with one of her boy friends because they had just broken up with her. She also only has one boy in her class that is her height. The others are all about twelve inches shorter. I laughed when I went to their last dance and she had to hunch over to dance with them.

My philosophy also is to keep your teens busy, so she or he doesn’t have time to think about the opposite sex. She plays basketball, track, youth Wednesday nights, and rides horses every other night. We then take her to horse events on the weekends and sometimes even during the week when we can make it. This works really well!

I also don’t have a problem with her dating boys out of town. She cannot drive, he cannot drive, so the only time they see each other is at school events. They get to talk on the phone and that is a set time and time limit. This is a win situation for a parent. Your daughter gets to build her communication skills with a boy over the phone and when the school events come up that the boyfriend will be at, you make sure you are there. There is no physical contact! I prefer she doesn’t have any Physical contact until she is at least twenty! ( I know I am living in my own little pink bubble)

I really believe that if you let your children live some and direct them in a direction that you can handle and control you both can be happy. If you never let them live, they will rebel, or be so naive that they will be lost in the real world.