I’m Not Ready for Dating

I don’t mean for me; I’m talking about my daughter “sissy”. Well I’m not exactly sure if I should call it “dating” but the thing is that her and the next door neighbor boy are kind of spending a lot of time together. I don’t know how to explain it but it’s just one of those things that as plain as day with the way they’re acting. We’ve lived here for 2 years now and last year they were in the same class together.

When we first moved here they barely talked to each other; instead buddy and him played together most of the time. Now sissy and him are inseparable. With summer here he is over here constantly asking if sissy can come out to play. It used to be he was asking for buddy. And he doesn’t stop at coming over once — he has to stop over several times in a day until she is finally finished with her chores and homework.

some of the things that I’ve noticed is them sitting together (way too close for my comfort and standard), she giggles at everything he has to say, when she climbed a tree — he was right there by the tree holding out his arms to make sure he could catch, she hurt her leg over the weekend and he came to me right away to find out what happened and if she was okay. You know…little things like that. Am I overreacting?

Well anyway with all this stuff going on it made me realize that I’ve never really had that “talk” with her about “stuff” (you now?…girl stuff) So I did the first thing I always do when I have an issue I need to take care of; I started looking for a book. I found a couple of good books from Amazon.com and purchased Growing Up: It’s a Girl Thing. For my daughter this book was perfect; it didn’t give too much details about sex but rather described it as an adult activity. I really liked how it discussed first periods and other aspects of puberty.

when I was looking for a book to talk to sissy about this stuff I realized that I’d never really had that talk with buddy and thought I’d better find something to talk to him about puberty. He’s 13 and I really had no clue what he knew and what he didn’t. I wanted to get a book like the one I had found for sissy that discussed sex as something to be saved for adulthood and didn’t go into much detail about it. For him I found American Medical Association Boy’s Guide to Becoming a Teen . This is really a good book for his age. He was of course embarrassed at first but the book was written in a way that helped him to feel comfortable. I also talked to the adult male neighbor that buddy is real close to and asked if he could give me some assistance in discussing this stuff with buddy so he wouldn’t be left in the dark and would have a male to turn to if he had answer.

I’m sure this is a phase that my daughter is going through with the neighbor boy and that it’s all sweet and innocent but I feel it’s never too early to instill in them what’s right and wrong and what my values are about these things. I’m also glad that it opened my eyes to what I needed to discuss with the kids.