How to politely tell our DS that we really, REALLY don't like his GF?

[Anonymous]

This makes me really sad. One of my best friends from HS probably meets this description due to then-undiagnosed learning disabilities. But you know what? She is the sweetest person ever, and a great mom. Anyone would be very lucky to have her as a DIL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both are 16, both go to the same school. They've been going out for the past 3 months. We've met the parents too. We really don't like the girl. Dresses like she has just rolled out of bad, poor grades, hasn't picked up a book probably since kindergarten. Compared to DS' previous GF, she's a total loser. Absolutely uninhibited, inserts herself in all conversations. Parents are clueless or don't care. Yet he sees her as funny and utterly helpless, wants to bring her to family functions. How can we put a stop to this?

They are 16! What's the big deal? When he asks her to marry her next month, it might be because you made such a huge issue out of it, because teens like nothing better than to pi** off their parents.

I'll never forget when my nephew (who knew my sister HATED his GF) changed his facebook status to engaged to GF when he was 15 and left it that way for a week just to piss his mom off. I really thought my sister was going to blow a freaking gasket the way she was carrying on. It was pretty funny... to everyone other than my sister.

I don't find that funny at all. Obviously you don't have teens.

I am not the last pp, but the one above. I do have teens, and it is pretty funny to me. You just have to shrug off teen behavior off, unless they are crashing cars, getting high, or other destructive behavior, they gauge what to do by how we as parents react. They also respect you less when you go nuts. But, if you are calm and keep your cool even when they scream at you, they will eventually realize that you can't be provoked, which is what they are going for. That is how they assert their "independence" by making us parents dumb and overreactor, and unfortunately so many parents do just that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I feel for you, I too know what it's like when your DC dates someone hideous. Best way to resolve this? Lots of smiles. Include her in venues where she will not fit in. Invite teens who are of the same background or interests to your house. She will stick out like a sore thumb. Eventually your DS will see the light of day. He shouldn't be this girl's savior. She needs to work on it herself.

I can't wait until you and OP start posting about "my DIL isn't good enough for my son, she's awful, I don't understand why we never see my son or his family anymore, why does my son spend every holiday with his in-laws, why won't my son visit without his wife?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I feel for you, I too know what it's like when your DC dates someone hideous. Best way to resolve this? Lots of smiles. Include her in venues where she will not fit in. Invite teens who are of the same background or interests to your house. She will stick out like a sore thumb. Eventually your DS will see the light of day. He shouldn't be this girl's savior. She needs to work on it herself.

Yes. Going out of your way to passively aggressively make an awkward child feel miserable is key.

Jesus, I can't believe some of you people.

[Anonymous]

You don't. There's really no polite way to say something like this, and most teens (likely most people in general) are unlikely to be receptive anyway. All you'd probably achieve is straining your relationship with your son for no actual practical benefit. Besides, for an older teen I'm not sure choice of girlfriend is really any of the parent's business.

[Anonymous]

OP,

Several of my boyfriends' parents did not like me in HS. I was very anti-establishment, very political, very outspoken. I also had great manners, great grades, and came from a "nice" family. Guess what. When my boyfriend of the moment had a mom or dad who was being a douche to me, I wrinkled my nose and said, "no thank you," to every invitation to come over to his house to do anything with his family. The boyfriend wanted to get into my pants so where ever I wanted to hang out was pretty much where we hung out. Accordingly, mom and dad did not see much of their son during free time.

My senior year in HS boyfriend had a family that I am still close with 30+ years later. They were and are wonderful. I loved his mom like my own. She worked FT (my mom did not) and I often got the family dinner started if we were at his house after school. I helped with dishes. I spent time with the younger siblings. I helped them with homework. I helped his younger sister choose an outfit to go to a middle school dance.

One of my sister's boyfriends had a mom who hated her. My sister refused to go over to his house because his mom was so mean to her. That kid practically lived with us for two years in high school.

I am a lawyer now. When my ex-boyfriend heard from his wife that she wanted a divorce, I was one of his first phone calls. Not to rekindle anything, but for friendship and advice. His family's embrace of me is one of the reasons for our long friendship and one of the reasons why their son and brother had a lawyer and friend he could call for free for help before he felt ready to tell them.

Be nice to the kid your son is dating. You will lose a lot of time with him just by default if you don't.

[Anonymous]

I was disliked by my high school bf's mother. She was a nasty racist and a bigot. So i took to saying "bollocks" at every opportunity when at their house and she backed away in horror. Neither i nor the BF gave a fig what she thought. And he and i dated for 4 years. We are still friends now, some 30 years later!

[Anonymous]

He knows how you feel. It will be torture, but keep your own counsel.
We had to bite our tongues for three long years while our daughter dated this loser who was all sizzle and no steak, with a lot of loudmouthed dreams of becoming a software billionaire. He finally got old and she married a great guy. When she found the one, we were really encouraging. They were engaged six months later, now happily married.

[Anonymous]

I don't think it's appropriate for you to ask your son's girlfriend if she is on birth control. It doesn't matter if she is 16 or 36.

You need to teach your son about safe sex and then let go.

You sound horrible. She doesn't answer to you about her body.

You have some boundary issues. I also think that anyone who would call another teenager (who hasn't done anything mean to them) a loser is really immature. Perhaps she's not academic. Maybe she says goofy things. Nothing you've said suggests she's been mean or rude to you.

It could be a lot worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP. I don't see the problem with encouraging both teens to use birth control, and directly asking about it. If it's a serious relationship, it deserves a serious talk. I would have just looped her parents in on the conversation.

Yes, my son has access to condoms, I proactively supply them. Still, females the control over the decision to become parents. Plus, they are both safer with two forms of BC. Reach out to her parents!

- And yes, keep your mouth shut about your personal thoughts on his GF.

Birth control is important. Parents should talk to thier kids about it and other safe sex concerns. But there is a world of difference between having an open, honest, and educational discussion with your teen and grilling your DS's GF about her birth control choices. It is particularly galling because OP attacks the girl as "absolutely uninhibited, inserts herself in all conversations", then mentioning that she feels comfortable directly asking this girl intimate health questions.

Personally, I think even encouraging the use of birth control to DS's GF is going a bit far, unless it is a context of a previously disclosed sexual relationship. Not every teenage relationship is sexual. Personally, I think there is a decent chance that a teenage girl could feel pressured to have sex by such a confrontation, given the implied assertion. But even encouraging kids to "Be safe, etc." would be much better. Just like there is a difference between the government saying regular colonoscopies are important for people of a certain age and having a policeman, social worker, or census taker asking you if you have had the procedure performed recently. Or to put it back in the parenting context; child sexual abuse is a problem and you should have age-appropriate conversations with your kids about that. You should not have that same conversation with DC's best friend about that, absent some peculiar circumstances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I feel for you, I too know what it's like when your DC dates someone hideous. Best way to resolve this? Lots of smiles. Include her in venues where she will not fit in. Invite teens who are of the same background or interests to your house. She will stick out like a sore thumb. Eventually your DS will see the light of day. He shouldn't be this girl's savior. She needs to work on it herself.

Yes. Going out of your way to passively aggressively make an awkward child feel miserable is key.

Jesus, I can't believe some of you people.

Hey, it is important to keep kids of different "backgrounds or interests" apart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They're 16, chances are it's not going to last!

This!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I feel for you, I too know what it's like when your DC dates someone hideous. Best way to resolve this? Lots of smiles. Include her in venues where she will not fit in. Invite teens who are of the same background or interests to your house. She will stick out like a sore thumb. Eventually your DS will see the light of day. He shouldn't be this girl's savior. She needs to work on it herself.

Yes. Going out of your way to passively aggressively make an awkward child feel miserable is key.

Jesus, I can't believe some of you people.

Yes, and because we all know that teenagers love it when their parents randomly "invite teens" to their house! wtf.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
OP, you said that your son sees her as helpless. He probably feels he can "save" her, make her better, be the help she needs -- whatever. He may not realize it himself, but he might be feeling important and needed because this helpless person depends on him now.

If he is seeing himself in the savior role here, you will only make that role more important to him if you bad-mouth this girl, and yes, he'll see any criticism, however nicely put, as bad-mouthing. He very likely will view your disapproval as an unprovoked adult attack on this helpless, clueless, unfiltered girl. And he will feel defensive on her behalf.

That will drive him to stick with her, not end it with her. You'll only be confirming, in his mind, that she is just sadly misunderstood by everyone but him, and he's the only one who can help her.

I'm not going to get into whether or not she actually IS as big a loser as you think, though the post is pretty judgmental, and it's clear you preferred the other girl to her. But I can say that if you think you can convince him to drop her, he's not going to do that if he's feeling he alone is the one who can "save" her. I would focus on being sure he is involved in a lot of extracurriculars, is doubling down on homework (after all, it's junior year so that should be happening anyway), is focusing on college prep and college choice, and has places to be and things to do.

Sixteen year old boys are just not that deep. Have you met any of them?

Sixteen year old boys are horny. They are also teenagers who like to have (non sexual) fun too.

This girl is probaby a lot of fun.

OP needs to work on her own son's morality and sexual habits and make sure he is not just using this girl for sex.

Worry about your son's prptection OP. It sounds like he is a wild one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
OP, you said that your son sees her as helpless. He probably feels he can "save" her, make her better, be the help she needs -- whatever. He may not realize it himself, but he might be feeling important and needed because this helpless person depends on him now.

If he is seeing himself in the savior role here, you will only make that role more important to him if you bad-mouth this girl, and yes, he'll see any criticism, however nicely put, as bad-mouthing. He very likely will view your disapproval as an unprovoked adult attack on this helpless, clueless, unfiltered girl. And he will feel defensive on her behalf.

That will drive him to stick with her, not end it with her. You'll only be confirming, in his mind, that she is just sadly misunderstood by everyone but him, and he's the only one who can help her.

I'm not going to get into whether or not she actually IS as big a loser as you think, though the post is pretty judgmental, and it's clear you preferred the other girl to her. But I can say that if you think you can convince him to drop her, he's not going to do that if he's feeling he alone is the one who can "save" her. I would focus on being sure he is involved in a lot of extracurriculars, is doubling down on homework (after all, it's junior year so that should be happening anyway), is focusing on college prep and college choice, and has places to be and things to do.

Sixteen year old boys are just not that deep. Have you met any of them?

Sixteen year old boys are horny. They are also teenagers who like to have (non sexual) fun too.

This girl is probaby a lot of fun.

OP needs to work on her own son's morality and sexual habits and make sure he is not just using this girl for sex.

Worry about your son's prptection OP. It sounds like he is a wild one.

OP needs to stay out of her son's relationship -- it's none of her business and it sounds like she has problems with boundaries anyway (asking the GF about birth control was way out of line, yikes!). As long as there's communication between bf and gf and the two people actually in the relationship are satisfied with it, leave it alone. They've obviously got their reasons for being together, whether that's just sex or something more, and at this point anything OP does to interfere will backfire