Boyfriends

[Punkatheart]

We knew it would come of course - my daughter has just started at a new school and is talking a lot about one particular boy. This morning, she asked me if she could go out with him. She will be 14 in April. Although I am chuffed that she is open with me, I want to handle this well. I am a bit of an over-protective mum and I have cancer - so anxiety is a bit of an issue.

Just wanted some advice. 13 seems so young this days, as I didn't have a boyfriend until I was 16. But of course girls are more mature and I don't think that banning or making a fuss would be very constructive.

Wisdom, please?

i had a boyfriend at 13, then i had another one a week after that, then another one a week after that! ha! i dont think you have anything to worry about.
Lovely that she asked you!

My friends mum and dad have actually been together since they were 13!!

i dont really have any great advice but i really think it will be fine, just be ready with the tissues when it comes to an end! or dont be surprised if the name of the boyfriend changes from month to month!

I certainly wouldn't ban this sort of thing - nothing drives a teen to do something more than banning it ! :)(in my experience anyway)... I tend to find that these early 'boyfriends' are fairly lightweight and experimental and probably doesn't mean the same to her as to you.. so play it cool and see where it goes!

"Going out" may not mean anything very much. What does she mean by it, do you think?

Agree with Acanthus and Stricnine: going out might mean very little indeed. We started talking about "going out" when I was about 11, at which age 'will you go out with me?" meant "can I tell my friends that you are my boyfriend and giggle about you in the corners". According to dd this is pretty well what it still meant to her 12/13yo friends: she once told us at the dinner table that she had been asked out by one of the boys at school- but as she was the third girl he had asked in the course of an afternoon she wasn't terribly flattered...

Dd is now 14 and a bit of smooching in the school corridors seems to be about as far as it goes for most of them. I am assuming that as they move into Yr 11, some of them will start getting a bit more serious- and it's worth keeping the channels of communication open- but for many girls, dd included, it is still a fairly harmless ritualised courting game, practice for the real thing.

Thank you for those, all - I think she talked about going out as going to town with other friends. That doesn't sound too traumatic. But I will have to lay a few ground rules - awareness that there should be nothing dramatically physical and that we want to meet him to see if he is not a two-headed serial killer...