I have, for a long time, held a simple belief about adolescence. It was shared with me by a fellow mental health clinician, who himself had four of these youths at the time. He said, " I tell them I completely trust them and their judgement until they do something that makes me get involved in their lives. Then I will take whatever steps needed to keep them safe so they can go forward again, without me involved." I liked it. It's simple and straight forward. Obvious I trust you to go to parties, until I find out you are puking your brains out in the bathroom, then we reassess. You can use the car, until you get a ticket, reassess. So as long as they remain "successful" , at either keeping their mischief from me( as we did with our parents) or in doing what's right, they continue to get room to grow.
In our day, we could go to a party and play spin the bottle, or suffer through "7 minutes in Heaven" and our parents were none the wiser. We could for the most part, experiment with our sexuality, learn about our bodies, practice being sexual beings, innocently and without our parents knowing about it. And they didn't need to know about it, usually. It now it seems that things are at once both slower and faster. My sons' are not at boy-girl parties on a regular basis, and to my knowledge no one has shown up drunk to the last day of school in 8th grade ( Can you believe that? And in Bethel in 1980?) We have kept them busy enough, sequestered enough.
Then there was Facebook. Now a days our all-to-anxious-to-write about it kids share intimate details on the public forum, leading me to the question, "When now do we get involved?" When a friend tells us what's on her son's FB stream? Is that reason enough?
I recently learned, for some, oral sex is now "3rd Base". As I recall, oral sex wasn't even on the playing field 30 years ago ( oh God did I just do that math correctly?). yep, that sucks.About that math I mean.
I'm cracking myself up here. sorry. Back to the subject.
I am fairly confident my boys' are still relatively innocent. Notice all the uncertainty in my word choice. They are really not given much opportunity to have alone time with a girl, that I am certain of. What I am hearing is the change seems to be in the girls' ( no one specific) eagerness, willingness to almost be used by boys. Is this the backlash to feminism? So we need to thank Snookie? We are owning our own sexuality at 13? And are willing to give BJ's to anyone? I know there were girls, troubled girls, like this then. It seems now it is more the norm. So as a mom, with new information I would not have had 30 yrs ago as a parent, what do I do?
I know what I would do if I had a daughter, that daughter specifically who is so willing to have her value debased. But I don't. I have testosterone pumping boys. The ones you used to have to watch out for.
And because of Facebook, I now have information my parents would not have had and therefore feel I am required to act. But my kids didn't do anything. So am I?
So we talk. We talk about sex, and respect, and their plans for their futures. We talk about unfortunate girls who give themselves over for the wrong reasons( there is NO right reason at 13, 14, 15, 16...!) We talk about responsibility and self-control. Feelings, and frustrations. Relationships and communication.We talk about diseases and my unwillingness to raise another child. We use our slogan "Sex can wait, masturbate". And I keep them busy. And in groups with other boys.
They are not doing anything "wrong". But life altering things happen. I have a friend who was date raped at 15 by one of our other "friends", another with a pregnancy scare at 14. One of my ex-boyfriends became a father at 17 & and some girls had abortions & we were the "good kids".
I know my arsenal is mostly full of stalling techniques. But isn't that the best we can do for something that is inevitable? That, and educate them on navigating the curves.
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