Tween and Teen

Twelve-year-old Max came home from school one day and told his mother that kids in his grade-seven class were going out.

"I thought, 'Oh my God. They're only 12. This is loony' ", recalls Valerie Bertrand. "But she refrained from blurting out her first reaction. I asked what that meant and he said, 'It means you go to a movie together. And, the girls and boys hold hands in the hall at school.' "

Bertrand second-guessed herself for a while: "I thought, am I being old-fashioned? If a kid says everybody in the class is doing it, you think, well, maybe that's what they do now. But I talked about it with my husband, and checked it out with some friends, and we agreed - 12 is too young."

Meg Hickling, a sexual health educator in Vancouver and author of two books aimed at helping parents talk to their kids about sex, supports Bertrand. She says, "There is a big attraction about having a boyfriend or girlfriend but I feel that kids this age shouldn't go on one-on-one dates. You want to keep them in groups."

Hickling notes that whether preteens even think about dating really varies from year to year. "Sometimes teachers tell me, 'Last year the grade sixes were like babies, this year they are like 20-year-olds.' It only takes one rather magnetic personality in a group to set everyone off, thinking they need to go out."

Bertrand has observed a similar pattern: "I think that sometimes the girls are interested in the opposite sex sooner, and the girls drive the group. In Max's class this seems to be the case."

But even when preteens do want to date, it's often the idea of pairing off, rather than the reality, that they like. When Margaret Veenstra's 12-year-old daughter, Meggan, announced that she was going with a boy at school, she explained to her mother that she didn't really want to do anything with him, they just wanted to go together. "So," recounts Veenstra, "they didn't hold hands, they didn't kiss, they didn't even dance together at the little school dance they had, and in a week they had broken up. Meggan cried a bit about it. But later she told me she was happy because she had gotten to go with someone."

Marie Nault says her 12-year-old son, Richard, had a relationship with a girl that lasted a couple of months longer, but like many early romances it mostly involved talking on the phone a lot and eating lunch together at school. When it began to get more intense, with the girl following him around at school, Richard decided to break up.

As Hickling points out, "Parent's don't need to worry if they can assure themselves that it is just a date - that the kids are just watching a movie or bowling or going to McDonald's." Richard and his girlfriend, for example, did go to a movie, but Nault drove them there and picked them up, which put built-in limits on their date. What Hickling thinks shouldn't happen at this age is the opportunity for sexual experimentation. "Kids can be overwhelmed by the messages about sexuality in our society - in advertisements and music videos," explains Hickling, even though at this age they are normally not the least bit interested in sex. Bertrand agrees: "Kids see these 16-year-olds on Dawson's Creek, who are really 20-year-old actors, and they forget they are only 12."

Of particular concern to Hickling are situations that prematurely sexualize a child. "You need to be concerned if a 12-year-old is dating an older boy. When teenagers get pregnant, the father is usually older. You have to ask why a 17-year-old would want to date someone so much younger."

Hickling says its important to be explicit about what you expect of your preteen. "Make sure your child understands that he is too young to be having sex - that he isn't grown-up enough. Don't let stuff go by. When you see something on TV, you can say, 'I think that's really inappropriate and dangerous.' Sometimes parents expect that their children will absorb their values through the air. You have to talk about values."

Bertrand and her husband eventually sat down with Max and explained, "We really like your friends a lot and we would love for you to invite them all over. But we are not going to allow you to go out yet."

"He needed us to tell him," observes Bertrand. "That way he can go back to school and say, 'My stupid parents won't let me go out'. It takes the pressure off him. He can be mad at us for a bit, but he doesn't have to be mad at himself for getting into something he's not ready for."

This type of parental bailout can help your child save face, even though she won't thank you for it. Don't lose your sense of humour, suggests Hickling. Tell your child you know it's hard, and that parents are mean.

The first tentative forays into more serious relationships do have their humorous side, though we would never humiliate our children by pointing it out, right? "Richard tells me he danced with three girls at the last dance, but one of them is just a friend", muses Nault. "I wondered, So what are the other two?"

Resources

Speaking of Sex and the new More Speaking of Sex: What Your Children Need to Know and When They Need to Know It , by Meg Hickling, RN, Northstone, 1996 and 1999.

May 2000