Best advice to give a teen who is dating?
What is a piece of advice you gave a teenager or got as a teenager that helps them navigate the dating world?
3 answers
- ktisme50
I study developmental psychology for fun.
Gordon Neufeld has a lecture about how our brains are wired to connect to family first, then in childhood, adventuring helps us to connect to oneself (my/your/his/her individual self), and finally, in teens through early adulthood, to peers. Encouraging kids to bond to peers before the nervous system is ready undermines the child’s development — they miss out on the opportunity to learn how to depend on their gut/conscience as a guide and instead look to their peers, referentially, for guidance and validation… instead of developing self-awareness, self-validating and self-respecting priorities. In other words, kids in this situation miss out on developing a solid-self concept.
Peggy Orenstein has some good books about the respective genders and sex. They discuss the attitudes and expectations common in popular culture today. If you are sexually conservative, the content will be distributing and is for the parents, not the teens. It will help you know what to prioritize and how to present info to help your child develop a healthy, shame-free sexual stage for life.
Your attitude about your marriage, dating and sex is probably the biggest message your kids will receive about dating — and much of it is non-verbal. I teach my kids about emotional intelligence, mindfulness (a mode for self-awareness necessary for emotional intelligent practices), growth mindset, shame-resilience (connection, self-compassion), domestic violence (& what to watch for), socially-pressured pitfalls (addictive substances), secure attachment (avoiding enmeshment and encouraging differentiation), and my #1 hope is that they know to their bones that they deserve to be treated with regard, just like I teach them to regard others. I have additional book recommendations for these topics, if anyone is interested. Adult development is actually my real fascination.
On that note—
If you are interested in feminism, or are leery of feminism, I recommend the book Ejaculate Responsibily, just for your own social-sexual education. The idea that women have sex * for men* destroys passion and stunts female sexual development/potential. If we want to give our kids a better world, it’s on us parents to educate ourselves and teach our kids how to become equal partners, through our lived examples, and how we teach them to orient around their individual social attitudes and responsibilities.- jujubee—Are you saying you don’t think teens should date?
- ktisme—Not necessarily. Dating age depends on what you want to encourage in your child. I do believe that waiting to date until these concepts are all discussed (and understood) at an age-appropriate level, is ideal before teens begin dating.
- glozca—Agree— I’d also add the book Vagina by Naomi Wolf, as this is an exploration of pleasure in different cultures and also has a neuroscience and feminist component.
- jujubee—You should let your teen kids date. I don’t have fun buzz words or books I would never let my teen read to back me up, just some experience. I used to think it wasn’t that big of a deal if my kids dated or not as a teen. Then my oldest turned 18 and had never been on a date. No big deal, right? I was so wrong. Fortunately, we’ve always had open communication in our house and he eventually told us the overly complicated ideas he had gotten about dating because he had spent so long overthinking it. He had decided dating was a high pressure situation instead of a chance to go have fun with someone he was interested in. We spent several months helping him work through it and he eventually took a girl out for ice cream. And then he took her to prom. And he realized dating was fun and didn’t need to be such a high stress situation. Nobody was making lifetime commitments because they agreed to get ice cream. I’m glad we realized our mistake early and could help him fix it. I can’t imagine how difficult it would have been if he’d carried on into his twenties without dating. I’ve talked to other parents of older teens who’ve found themselves in similar situations. None of us saw it coming and didn’t realize how important dating was to their growth as a teenager. I’ve also talked to moms of young kids who can’t believe I’m letting my 16 year old date. All I can do is tell them that life made sure I learned my lesson. It’s important to teach our kids values and how to treat others with respect. But if we are too worried about whether or not they are “ready”, we deny them the chance to become their own person.
- ktisme—The readiness is established at a developmentally appropriate level. This can happen at any age the parent assesses as appropriate. I see it as the parent’s job to educate and equip the child with skills (& mindset) for dating. Informing your child, and anxiety about the topic of information, are two separate things. They can be associated, and it’s important to both understand life and to live it. I think your story & take-away message are excellent! All things mentioned here, had they been provided to me as a teen, would have helped me feel more prepared to date, not less prepared. Dating for teens is ideally low-key, focused on getting to know yourself as much as it is about getting to know others.
- mhcorons80
Family first.
If you’re interested in someone who doesn’t put their family, or yours, first : they aren’t the one for you. The end game of dating is marriage. If the people you date don’t have the same values you do, it’s going to get messy.Trust your gut. And that of those closest to you.
There’s a difference between love and lust. Try to learn those differences.
rachel8302
I don’t have teenagers yet, so I have no advice from the parent side.
But I grew up in a home where dating as a teen was pretty strongly discouraged. And I feel like I made so many social errors in college when dating that I wish I had been able to make in high school when other people were making the same errors. So that’s all I have to pass on at this point. :) Go on dates! You’ll have fun, probably make an occasional social error, and that’s ok.