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Are you Ready for your Teens to Date
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A friend recently shared her exasperation over several girls pursuing her son, an eight grader at a Christian school. "One night I answered the phone at 10:15 -- the sixth call of the evening for Matt! He says sometimes these girls call just to chat, but they often push him as to whether he likes them, or whether he will go out with them. He says he really feels pressured. It wasn't did this way for my older son six years ago."
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At first we thought we were hearing an unusual case, but as we as we talked to teens, we realized this phenomenon is occurring across the country. One student told us, "Lot's of girls phone boys they like. One girls I know called a guy 10 time in one night. The next day she told everybody how much he like her, but he went around the school saying how nuts she was."
Many of us grew up learning what seemed like simple and natural rules for dating relationships. The rules have changed-- dramatically. Anyone who watches prime-time television cannot help but note the sexual aggressiveness of female characters (as well as the general banality and even stupidity of the males). Few adolescents in prime time TV are chaste, and their decision to become sexually active is greeted with great fanfare.
How have the new rules affected teenagers? Thirty years ago girls will sexually active at half the rate of boys. Today, premarital intercourse rates for young women lag only a few percentage points behind of those young men.
It is not too late for parents to step forward and teach young people some rules about dating. Here are some ways to direct them.
Encourage strength. Not too long ago, boys could, by going out with only "nice girls," go through a lot of dating without having to be the one to put the brakes on the physical relationship. These days, however, they are having to deal with pressure from the girl to have a deeper physical relationship. Girls - and boys - need to develop the strength to live by God's limits before they ever step out on a date.
Recently, a young man whom Stan was counseling said he was dating a girl who had had sex with "only" six other guys in her life.
"Is that a low number?" Stan asked.
"Are you kidding"? the young man replied. " I don't know any other girls who have had sex with fewer than a dozen of guys!"
We parents begin to help our children develop the strength to say no early in life. We train them not to conform to the crowd. We can praise them for making good decisions that go against their group of friends.
A big part of self-control is making decisions in advance. Imagine you have resolved to lose five pounds by "eating right." When is the best time to make decisions about what you are going to eat -- before you go to the grocery store or after you are sitting in front of the baked lasagna and a Caesar salad?
It's the same for our kids. They have a better chance for self-control when they understand the choices they will be exposed to, and when they make their decisions before they get into tempting situations.
Prepare them for opposition. Our kids are hearing powerful message about sexuality at earlier and earlier ages and watching condom ads in prime time. Some of the message being drummed are: "Without a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you are nothing." "Sex is the only way to become real man or a woman. "He or she not love you without sex."
Parents who ignore these messages are putting their kids at risk. We should prepare our girls to expect many of these destructive messages from television, teen magazines, music and their dates. We should prepare our boys to hear many of these same messages, often from girls they are attracted to.
If parents can anticipate the distorted messages our teens are going to hear, then we can defuse those views. In the safety of our home and through honest discussions, we can help them to develop the defenses to reject those negative messages. We can help them reason through the illogic, see its deficiencies, and underscore the idea that "God's views is better."
Explain the purposes of dating. Some girls today are aggressive because they look at dating as a conquest, proving their worth by the boys and they go out with. On the other hand, a boy may try to show his "manhood" by dominating and manipulating a woman to "get all he can."
As parents, we can give our teens healthy expectations for dating, including :
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Dating is an opportunity to have fun and to expand your enjoyment of different activities. You get to do things on dates that are not part of the family routine. Church youth groups can foster healthy fun by sponsoring activities for young people and by giving them good ideas through "Great Date" workshops.
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Dating provides that chance to explore what you like and respect in others. Dates can be a wonderful opportunity to know peers at some depth. You see people in a new light when you see them with their families, in new activities and with others, as well as when you spend time alone with them. Teens should be urged to trust their instincts about things they do not like about the other person. They should also be confident about taking joy in what they do like.
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Dating is a great place to enjoy friendships. Parents and youth group leaders can help teens build healthy relationships by discussing dating etiquette; how to be polite: how to be friends with the opposite sex and the elements of a good relationship.
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Dating helps you develop confidence. When dating is handled properly, teens gain self-assurance as they successfully handle the challenges that will face them-- such as peer pressure and how to put a stop to a relationship that is no longer healthy or helpful.
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Dating can help you learn to handle those feelings of sexual attraction correctly. We must tell our kids that it is a normal for them to feel some sexual excitement for someone they care for. But we must also remind them that they do not have to act on those feelings, and that God wants them to follow His rules. We can also remind them that if their relationship is godly, then waiting will be strengthened and will honor the Lord.
Prepare them for infatuation and love. One of our privileges as parents is to help our teens anticipate the emotional elation and turmoil of infatuation, as well as the joys, frustrations and sorrows of adolescent love. They must understand that they will fall in and out of love many times before they learn what it is.
One of the most helpful things we can do is to tell our stories because our stories are powerful. Tell your teens about the ups and downs you experienced. Tell them what infatuation felt like when you were sure it was lifelong love. Tell them about the obsessive way you wrote your flame's name over and over, the way your whole day revolved around when he would call you, or the electric thrill you felt when she smiled at you. Tell them about your confusion and pains as a relationship died a lingering death. Tell them about the agony of betrayal. Tell them about the fear of asking the one you thought you adored. Tell them of the boredom and frustration of discovering that you were not enjoying the one you were with. Tell them how your powerful feelings blinded you to his flaws and led you to exaggerate her perfections.
Explain the deceptive emotions that can masquerade as true love, emotions such as loneliness, neediness desire to fit in, thrill from breaking the rules and raw sexual attraction. This gives your teens a wider range of experiences, namely your experiences, to serve as a vantage point from which they can see their own experiences more clearly.
Most teen dating relationships are temporary. The average age of marriage for both men and women is in the mid-20's, so our teens are probably going to date many times - with many different people - before marrying. We often are not able to discern true love by how relationship feels. One of the differences between infatuation and love is that love can see flaws of another and still love.
Any real relationship can stand the test of time, and if it can stand the test of time, it can also stand the test of sexual restraint. A caution here: We should never tell our kids that what they are feeling at 16 is not true love. Rather, we should rejoice with them and encourage them that if what they are experiencing is real, it will be deepened and become even more beautiful by sexual purity and by allowing the relationship to develop slowly.
Inform teens about setting limits. Many kids from Christian homes hear their parent's message about premarital sexual intercourse loud and clear. But what about everything that can happen between holding hands and actual intercourse? Many parents freeze up in discussing this area Part of this is that we feel confusion or guilt about what we choose to do when we were dating.
But boys and girls must be helped to establish limits. We can start from the foundation that sexual intercourse is a life-uniting act that binds people together; it was meant by God to be experienced only in marriage. Given the beauty of the gift sexual union in marriage, we should strive to act in such a way that we guard that gift, so that when we marry, we will be able to experience what God meant sexual union to be.
Emphasize the following points:
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The goodness of sexual desires and the teen's longing to express those desires in a loving relationship. We were made by God to want to be physically close with someone we love.
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The reality that many of our sexual desires are not good. Such feelings are often predatory, selfish and obsessed with sensual pleasure. Their sexual feelings, and those of their boyfriend or girlfriend, are probably an impure mixture of good and bad, of genuine affection and sinful lust.
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No one has ever been hurt by refraining from sexual expression. Despite what their friends may tell them, sexual feelings do not have to be acted upon.
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Choose caution over experimentation. One activity can quickly lead to another.
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Set physical limits--and stick to them. Every counselor has heard the heartbroken statement "I wish I could go back to the way I was" after a young person had broken his or her standards.
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Urge communication within the teen's dating relationships. Dating couples should be able to talk to each other about their standards. A dating partner who cannot communicate about the relationship and who does not abide by the high standards of the other does not deserve loyalty of affection.
Stay Close.One final suggestion: Work hard to be a friend to your child. Be trustworthy, interested, a good listener, and an encourager. Even when adolescents don't act like it, they need demonstrations of our affection--hugs, kisses, pats on the back. Be excited about their hobbies, interests and accomplishments. Express your confidence in them. Beware of smothering or pestering them, but do not allow yourself to slide into an uncomfortable distance. Set reasonable rules, but be willing to discuss why you have set those rules.
The adolescent who is the most vulnerable to pressure from the opposite sex is the teen who feels alone and unsupported at home. It is the teen who does not have a confidante she can trust, an authority figure he can respect, who is at risk.
Yes, the unwritten rules for boy-girl relationships have changed in the 1990's. But involved parents can help teens write their own rules that will open the door to healthy, caring relationships.
(Source: "Women for Life," Issue No. 3 1994, pp. 16-18)
by Stanton and Brenna Jones
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