Reply to Is is ok for a kid to not date (or interact with) the opposite sex until college?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No, it's not a good idea for them to never interact with boys who basically make up half the population. It's fine if they don't want to date, but they need to be used to interacting with boys at least platonically. Can she join something in the neighborhood? Community theatre or a church choir or any teen volunteer org?[/quote]

I agree with this. I was really happy when my DD was 6-9 yrs old that she had many boys among her BFF group. She was sometimes the only girl invited to their birthday parties, and we always had a ton of girls and boys at DD's birthday parties.

Now DD is 13, in 8th grade, and her best friends are girls but she's got 2 boys she's really close to, they look out for her, she looks out for them, they all help each other with crushes (so far everyone has crushes on opposite sex, although DD's friend group has girls who i.d. as gay and a few others who are trans boys now).

Because the real world has all sorts of people, I VERY much want her to be used to navigating male/female dynamics. I want her to feel comfortable and confident around boys and soon young men, not feel she has to shrink herself or appear less smart or strong than she is.  And I really want her to navigate romance dynamics while she's still in our home. Already she's had a Saturday where the boy she really liked and who said he liked her wasn't responding to texts or chats, and she was curled up in a ball in her room not wanting to go out at all and all teary. We had several good talks about what happened, "big problems" vs. "small problems" in the scheme of things, and also how important it is to think about how being friends with a particular person makes you feel and how it's important you spend way more time feeling good when you interact with them than feeling bad.

After all that, we made her go out with another friend that day, she had a great time, and since then there have been other boys and other unreturned messages, and she's really able to mostly let it roll off her back and keep moving forward and not worry about it.  I much rather she wrestle with these dynamics at 13 when it's not intense yet, they're not going on actual dates yet, and who likes who changes weekly.

Never mind dynamics in class with ansewring questions and dealing with boys who don't like if you do better than them in things (or girls for that matter who are also competitive and mean). And dynamics with other girls around boys.

And then there is sexual contact, and as much as I"ll NEVER be ready for her to be sexually active, I also want any beginnings of it while she's under our roof.  Right now she tends to share with me what's happening with her and her friends, I hope it continues as much as possible as those relationships get more complicated and involved.

Want her to navigate all those things before college so she knows herself, has experience in many of these social interactions, and isn't fielding all this for the 1st time at 18.[/quote]

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