14 year old wants to start dating

[bananaramaboo]

Can I ask for opinions on this because I just want to see how others have managed similar situations. Two daughters 16 and 14. 16 yr old currently doing her GCSE’s 14 yr old in Year 10. I have always told my girls that friendships with boys is totally fine and I think it’s important that they learn to have healthy friendships with boys - but at 14-16 our focus is school and maturity levels aren’t really where they need to be for relationships.
14 yr old came to me yesterday to tell she’s had her first kiss with a boy friend that I knew about. I have always encouraged my girls to talk to me about these things and I said thank you for telling me, how was it, how do you feel etc. Come this morning I sat her down and said the rules haven’t really changed though - I would make clear to this friend that we dont allow dating and that if he wanted to be friends with you that would be fine. She is upset, saying she cant just turn her feelings off for him and she doesn’t want to just be friends.
Am I wrong here? I felt I have always been clear with the rules, and just because she doesn’t agree doesn’t mean she gets to break them. I acknowledge she did the right thing in telling me and don’t want her to feel
like she can’t tell me things.

A lot of years ago my dad told me the same thing..boyfriends after finishing school. I took absolutely no notice and carried on doing my own thing subsequently getting into all sorts of scrapes.

Far too strict. They will simply date anyway and keep it secret from you. Telling a kid they're 'not allowed' to have a boyfriend until they are 16 is just teaching them to lie to you.

It’s really good that she can come and tell you , my daughter is 14 and a lot of her friends can’t talk to their mum or dad!
let her date , she’s going to anyway but have the talk with her , remind her not to be coerced into sending nude pics , keeping self worth boundaries etc , they’re never to young to chat about these things and consent etc.
i really think they will ultimately do what they want to do , it’s our role to prepare them as much as we can to keep themselves emotionally mentally and physically healthy during them doing it and a flat no might run the risk of her hiding things from you in the future

You're going to push your DD away & not have her tell you things if you keep trying to control her like this. 14 is old enough to have an innocent relationship with a boy her own age. By all means have a chat to her about boundaries & what she should & shouldn't be doing. Let her know you trust her to make the right decisions & not be pressured into anything she feels uncomfortable with. Ask her to bring this boy home so you can meet him & go from there. If you have a sensible child then she'll not be doing much more than holding hands & maybe a bit of snogging, so not much different to any other boy friends she's got.

Part of being a teen and growing up is doing exactly what your daughter wants to do. Some teens feel ready and some teens don’t. If your daughter does feel ready to have a boyfriend it seems a very old-fashioned rule to have that she’s not allowed. Also, as much as you say it isn’t, it is controlling. You’re taking away her autonomy to make age appropriate decisions, like her own choosing friends, boys she likes etc. My mum was similar. I also used to be very open with her and talk about my whole life, until I didn’t. Once I saw that I was subject to many more rules than my friends and it was all about “studying” I just stopped telling her stuff and started to lie so I could live the life my friends were having. We don’t have a relationship now I’m an adult as she still intervened with her view of how I should live life well into adulthood. Finally stopped talking two years ago when I was 45 as she was still doing it and also getting in the middle of me and my own child and how I chose to parent. I’m not saying you’re the same as her, but just the way you’ve worded some of your posts reminds me of what she “thought” our relationship was when I was around your daughters age. Free the reins and the rules and show trust. A 14 year old isn’t a little girl any more.

It's pretty unfair to the 16 yr old if you change the rules for the 14 yr old. I tend to agree that 14 is a bit young for a proper boyfriend girlfriend situation and having a rule about it may stop girls being pressurised into situations they aren't mature enough to handle. Is the boy the same age and how did they come to be kissing?

I don't know how you handle it, but I think you are right in principle, I would relax the rules for the 16 yr old though.

It is quite normal for fourteen year olds to date.

You say you are happy for them to be friends, friends presumably go out together, spend time at each other's houses.

This

When l was 14, we didn’t call it “dating”, you just had a snog with someone and things evolved from there.

If she’s 14 and in year 10, she must be turning 15 in the next couple of months. Really normal for her to want to start kissing and dating at this age.

“Will inevitably go wrong which will be traumatic and something she will remember forever”??? I started dating when I was fourteen and I broke up with my first boyfriend because he was too immature for me. Teenage relationships break up all the time, and usually no one is traumatized. 🙄 You are being absolutely ridiculous.

What happens when you press "B" on the keyboard instead of "H" ?🍾

I think the best thing to do is say he’ll need to come over for dinner and a game of scrabble etc. Buffet style dinner. I think you can tell a lot from boys/ men through board games, do they get what they want without considering others, will they cheat in the game/ get in a hump if they’re loosing / if they do loose. Will he loose deliberately? If he wins is he gracious? Table manners etc.
You can gently interrogate him over dinner too.

Unfortunately, it’s very likely she’ll do this behind your back if you say no. It’ll become more intense and forbidden…. They’ll consider themselves Romeo and Juliet!

The idea of coming over for dinner and a board game may scare of him off anyway.

Haha if I told my 13 year old he is to invite his girlfriend around for buffet and Scrabble he would laugh his head off and tell me to get stuffed and quite rightly. At this age a girlfriend is someone he walks home from school, holds her hand and has a snog. They sometimes play online together too and that's it

Right? You'd think this girl had come home with an engagement ring, a mortgage in principle and a baby bump. She's just kissed a boy. They'll probably be broken up in 2 weeks and she'll eat ice-cream, cry, watch a girlie movie and then continue with her life.

I suppose I'm just old-fashioned, but I was born early Seventies and nobody was snogging at 13! People weren't "getting off" with each other until 15 earliest, usually more like 16. And people weren't having sex till sixth form, and then only if they were in relationships that had formed at 15/16. Stats say that the average age to lose virginity is 17.5, so that checks out. Of my friends, the ones who didn't have steady girlfriends or boyfriends in sixth form usually didn't lose their virginities till 18-plus at university.

Thirteen seems young to be snogging.

Oh no, don't give out tests like that! He'll know you're watching him to see if he's OK with losing etc. And if he does lose, he might feel embarrassed.

They are all different my son is one of the oldest in the year so is 14 in 3 months some kids in his year are not bothered by girls or relationships yet and some are.

It’s different with boys thought isn’t it! As the old proverb goes, a son is a son till he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all of her life.
Girls family is more likely to be involved and always have been. I think it’s quite normal for boys to come and meet their girlfriend’s parents early on..! Although each family is different. I do think 13 is on the younger side to be kissing though.

Hand jobs and blow jobs at 13! That's so awful. In the late Eighties, when I was 13, no way was any of that happening. We were still playing with our My Little Ponies! None of us had even kissed a boy.

Stats show that the average age to lose your virginity is 17.5, so I think it's not usual for 13-year-olds to be doing such sexual things as blow jobs etc. How foul. They are just children.

Well, except these days, apparently girls are pressured into doing sexual things a lot earlier, so it's much worse for them when the break-ups happen.

A PP says that in her 13-year-old daughter's group, the girls are all giving hand and blow jobs, which is just disgusting at that age. Where are the adults who are meant to be safeguarding them?

I'm always scandalised on these threads when I hear of 13-year-olds and the like being sexually active. What on earth has happened to the world. I was boy mad and yet I didn't even see a penis until I was 17!

Who told you that? Teenagers are statistically waiting longer to have sex and engage in other risk-taking behaviours than previous generations. Unless PP lives in a really rough area and DD's friendship group is particularly troubled, I'd suggest that the 13 yos in question are doing what teenagers have done for millennia and talking a big talk without actually having walked the walk.