Help - have looked in DDs diary and feel sick, devastated, that she is having sex

[tearinghairout]

She is 14.3. She told me a few weeks ago that she was going out with someone (14.1)

She didn't say any more so I started looking in her diary (awful, I know, - two of my friends with DDs the same age do it....) Anyway, lots of stuff like 'we hugged at the bus stop'. Aah. I know that at Youth Club they do lots of things about contraception - they practise putting condoms on a fake willy at 13!! So a couple of weeks ago I forced myself to talk about sex with her. I said that people didn't need to do anything they didn't want to, and the under-16 law is there to protect people. She said 'Mum, we do all that stuff at school' so I left it. We've also had plenty of discussion about abortion etc because of the storyline on Corrie recently. Not sure if at 14 that's 'real' though.

Then she found out through the grapevine that he'd 'done it' with his previous gf (15) & was upset. (diary again) Now she's out & I looked in her diary again - it described something that happened outside Youth Club last week. She says 'it' happened out of the blue & she wasn't very good ('but will get better with practice, he he').

I can't tell you how sickened I feel. I told DH & he said perhaps it's just a hand job or whatever, but that he'd noticed someone had googled Durex the other day (not us).

Whatever do I say to her before next Youth Club???

my friend has a daughter who also has been indulging in the same activity as my daughter albeit she is older

she rings and texts ME to talk about her problems and we meet

I syphon the information she gives me and report the odd bit back to her mother

I am now able to talk openly with my daughter about this self same 'issue' which i could NOT before i knew about it

lets wait till she ends up in hospital shall we? All in the ideal of privacy?
And for the OP i hope it all works out - as for reading her diary being an issue - please dont fret I think you did the right thing and now you can help your dd which is more than you could before you knew

I shall PARP here because i just think i am banging my head against a brick wall

I know exactly what you mean about looking back and thinking of yourself as being soooo grown up.

It really hit home with me the other day with a friends 16 year old sd. I sat there - she was having a full on tantrum, a bit like my 2 year old lol - and I thought to myself, ds1 was 15 months, and I was married at your age....... and I realised why my parents had been so upset at the time

All I know is when, or if it happens to my dc I want to be able to handle it so much better than they did. Whether I can or not, who knows.....

I do agree with paula over the diary though. I think it is very difficult. My DD knows i read her diaries, and would read her emails and MSN if i could. She had given me enough reason not to trust her. It did very little for our relationship though. But i do think you need to know what is going on sometimes. Being a parent to a teenager is the hardest thing in the world - give me a roomful of tantruming tots any day.

PY I also have personal experience of this issue and our opinions are not the same
you assume this is because I do not know what I am talking about
it is however because we see things differently

SUrely it's far better to focus on having a relationship with your teenager where they feel they can confide and talk to you with trust and honesty rather than relying on breaking trust and reading a private diary.
Why should it end up in hospital? It goes back to ensuring you equip them with knowledge and skills.
The more I think about it the more convinced I am that reading a teenagers diary is wrong.

Just to clarify Franny you said 'chilling' which as the loving mother of a teenage daughter i find extremely hurtful

You comment on parents who
'pry into a young person's diary for the purpose of catching her out in sexual activity'

I could word it very differently. I read my daughters notes and such ( she does not have a diary) to see where she is 'AT' and because of the issue i have found there I am VERY VERY VERY glad i have read that stuff

I love her like life itself and will continue to read her personal things at least for the next couple of years

As the victim of childhood sexual abuse i wish someone had taken the time to read mine

small cough..
erm, there's no point in discussing looking at the dd's diary, the OP's already done it.....so shall we all go back to helping her find a practical answer now she has this information?

well said ingles

MadamCh0let, I was answering this question from your post "Do you posters thing that having sex at 14 is a good thing, no biggie?", and pointing out that that wasn't really what anybody was saying.

And, no, I don't think my daughter was an adult at 14, and she was certainly in need of "moral guidance, practical support, financial assistance!! confidence and character building, career-guidance etc etc" and I'd like to think she got them from me, and still gets them now she is legally an adult.

What she also got was trust, confidentiality and a reasonable amount of freedom.

Paula I enjoy your posts and I am not trying to criticise your extremely extensive parenting experience
I'm sorry you felt angry and upset about my admittedly strongly worded post

I did find your statement about reading her diary for her own good 'chilling', yes
My own experience is that of having an extremely controlling and prying mother and it has affected my life adversely
I have virtually no relationship with her for a start, and had absolutely no-one to turn to when things did go badly wrong in my life. It has affected my ability to trust myself or others, as well, for instance. I could go on but it isn't really relevant. Just that your post was upsetting for me, i strongly disagree with you over that point.

I am very sorry to hear of your abuse and wish someone had protected you. I think these issues are not necessarily the same as what we are discussing but of course we will both bring our own personal experiences to the table

I hope you are ok - I had no intention to upset you personally but I do also feel very strongly about this issue and it is not lack of understanding that makes me have the opinions that i do - we are coming from wildly different viewpoints, though

i'm with ingles

Seriously, tell her that now she has a boyfriend she needs to know all about contraception etc. Arm her with knowledge before she arms herself with myth.

'wasnt very good'....nip performance anxiety in the bud! ..two way street and all that.

it would really really upset me if i read that.

(anyway i dont belong here...i have babies!)

{{{Paula}}}

tmmj, i think there might be some confusion about people thinking it is not ok to heavily intervene in a teenager's life to a major extent, and thinking that it is fine and desirable for the teenager to be having sex

one doesn't necessarily lead to the other

I've only really skimmed this thread but from experience I know how I will want to behave when my DD starts a relationship.

Firstly, I will never read her diary, unless I have already got other reasons to be concerned and she won't talk to me. A friend of mine knew her parents were reading ehr diary as they put it back wrong, she made up the most incredible stories to see how they'd react, they actually called the police on a guy she said she had been having sex with, then in front of the police she told her parents she had lied to catch them out. She never trusted them again, maybe if they'd trusted ehr she wouldn't have gone off the rails, slept with a lot of older men, got pg very young and then dumped her child on it's Dad whilst she buggered off making porn movies and taking drugs.

Another friend started seeing a guy a year older than her when we were 14, she was crazy about him, started off with kissing as it does, but her mum sat her down and discussed sex with her. She told her it wasn't legal and she'd prefer her to wait but if she truly felt ready then she needed contraception and was to make sure it was done nicely, no seedy shacking up behind the bike sheds. Her bf was allowed to stay over in the spare room, and her parents would go out for dinner so they had some time to herself. Her mum even taught her how to make his fave meal and they bought candles and stuff. She lost her virginity in her own bed, in what she said was the most romantic time ever, she is now married to him and they had their first child last year, at 26.

It may be nothing at all to do with the parenting styles how the stories turned out, but I think that both sets of parents laid down totally different foundations for their daughters to follow, one was mistrust and dishonesty the other was trust and love.

having sex at 14 is wrong and should be discouraged imo. It's one thing having the discussion about being safe, teenage pregnancy etc, but buying condoms and letting your dd have her bf over to be do the deed in their bedroom so you know where they are is quite another IMO, because that to me is giving the green light to go ahead, and that to me is wrong.

Also, I think it's much easier to have this laid-back attitude towards girls than boys. If your dd has sex at 14 it's no big deal really is it? (or so it would seem from the posts on here anyway), but if your ds has sex with his underage girlfriend then he is guilty of statutory rape, and the implications of that could be devostating.

so no, I will not be encouraging my ds to have sex anything before he is 16 or with anyone under the age of 16, lest he be branded a paedophile for the rest of his life.

Hi OP.

Just my 2p worth - I was having sex at 14 (with 16yo bf) and my dad had the right reaction imo: he got me to a Brook Advisory Centre and on the pill. He was divorced from my mum, who, had she found out would have FREAKED, grounded me, screamed, called me names etc etc. None of which would have stopped me having sex. I'd have almost certainly ended up pregnant had my dad not done this and I'm grateful to this day.

You can't really stop teenagers having sex (unless NEVER leaving them alone, EVER is an option and I don't think it is) but you can do your damndest to make sure they don't get pregnant or an STI.

Agree you shouldn't admit to reading diary though.

I don't think it's necessarily a matter or whether or not one thinks sex at 14 is 'ok', but once a 14yo IS having sex we as parents should face up to the fact that it will very likely continue. Imo.

I like the quote tmmj
I am not sure how meaningful it would be to a teenager? But you and I both know there is a lot of truth in there

agree tmmj. What's with the "well they're going to do it anyway" approach. Not is't's 14, where do we draw the line then? 13? 12? 10? the age of consent is there for a reason.

I don't think many 10 year olds either want or have the capability of being in a sexual relationship
I think it is best to try to keep the discussion in reality not flights of fantasy