I have a chick magnet in my house. It’s my youngest son who is going into middle school. He has not yet discovered an interest in girls but they sure have. As a matter of fact, girls’ fascination with him began in kindergarten. He started receiving notes from girls as soon as they learned how to write.
We have a collection of notes that he has received over the years. As he gets older however, I have noticed that the girls get bolder and frankly, a bit more aggressive. Needless to say we have been having a lot of discussions lately.
I really love this age though because he still shares everything with me, something I am going to treasure as long as I can.
This past week he hung out with a bunch of friends from the neighborhood. One of them happened to be a girl from his elementary school. I discovered several text messages from her the next day that all asked essentially the same thing. Her question was, “Am I awesome? Yes or no?” I noticed that he hadn’t replied to any of her messages.
Later on she sent him another text telling him that she likes him. He showed it to me. I asked him how he responded and he said that his response was, “Okay, bye.” Now I really want to steer my 6th grader away from this whole boy/girl thing as long as I can. I have always tried to teach my teens to be friends with the opposite sex. There is plenty of time for “liking” one another.
However at the same time I don’t want them to hurt another person’s feelings. While I could look at this girl negatively I am instead choosing to recall how that used to feel when you had a crush on someone.
So then she asked him if he likes her. Keep in mind that my son is sitting on my bed watching television with me while this texting is going on, so I am getting a play by play. He read the text to me and asked what he should say. I told him to tell her that he likes her as a friend. So he did and thankfully the conversation between them switched gears. She seemed to accept it.
I have some friends who make no big deal about the boy/girl thing. I really think it’s dangerous to encourage preteens to get an early start on that. I just really believe that encouraging friendship is the better way to go.
But then I have some friends who are so far the other way that they don’t allow their preteens to associate with the opposite sex. I believe that we need to teach our children how to have a friendship with the opposite sex and how to handle situations like the one my son was in.
He didn’t know how to respond, how to deal with this other girl’s feelings so he needed me to guide him. As strongly as we might be against something, we have to accept that these issues are a part of life and our job is to help guide our children through them.
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