Reply to Would you want your teen DD to be friends with an adult?

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "Would you want your teen DD to be friends with an adult?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Excuse me, but I'm like this.  I don't have children, but I mentor many tweens and teens.  Most parents prefer that their kids spend a few minutes with me, that way they have someone trustworthy to talk to, that isn't a teen...[/quote]

Are you a counselor? Because if not, i would not want my kids spending a few minutes with you, or any other adult who pretended to be their peer.[/quote]

NP here.[b] You have NO idea that this PP above is "pretending to be a peer" and neither does the OP[/b]. For all you or OP knows, this teen doesn't feel she can talk with her parents, or she doesn't have a teacher or other adult she feels comfortable talking with about certain things. OP, can you see how you might be reading too much into what you see? Please consider that you don't know enough to judge. As a parent of a teen girl, I can tell you that what you see is how many teen girls speak and stand when they talk with each other and, yes, with some very trusted adults. It's not weird. Boys don't necessarily interact the same way with adults from what I see of my close friends' teen sons.

I have a teen daughter and know that she needs some adults in her life who are not me or her dad. Most teens do need to know that other adults have their backs and can be sounding boards. It shouldn't take the place of parents being involved and aware of what's going on in the teen's life, but it also isn't automatically something of which to be suspicious.

I guess many folks, based on some posts here, would be suspicious of our close family friend who is in her 60s and doesn't have kids of her own but who for years has mentored many teens, both boys and girls, as a friend, tutor, chauffeur to events when parents couldn't drive them, etc. How sad for anyone to think that adults who are good with kids and interested in them must of course be somehow "off" or are pretending to be kids' peers.[/quote]

I'm the OP. I would never in a million years bump my shoulder against a teenager's shoulder like that. Sorry, but yes she is pretending to be a peer. She's middle aged. It looked totally weird.[/quote]

19.33/22.39 again.  You and I are different, but that was already obvious.  I HAVE bumped shoulders with some teenage girls, but only when they've done it to me first several times, and I've known them quite wThey see me as a big sister/aunt/mentor/whatever.  However, there's a huge difference in their behavior with me as compared to their behavior with other kids their ages.  Oh, and I'm 31, not that it matters.

I dress more conservatively than most adults, which has caused a few girls to tone down their blatant advertising.  And I'm more willing to listen to tween/teen angst than most adults, including the kids' parents.  And I make sure that the kid in question takes serious concerns to their parents, or I will do it for them.  And I'm trusted to keep the rest of the angsty diatribe sacrosanct, so they come to me with everything.

OP, you don't know the woman, you don't know what the relationship is between her and the teenage girl.  Heck, we don't even know if you know the girl!  How about minding your own business and worrying about your own kids?  If you let your kids know that they aren't to form any kind of mentoring relationship with any adult you don't know... well, it will protect your kids from predators (which I assume is your concern).  However, that means that their choices are limited to talking to parents (almost never the first choice for serious conversations), kids their age (usually the first choice for serious conversations, but kids give immature advice, because... they are immature!), or school officials (last choice, nobody wants to tell a school counselor something that would get a friend or themselves kicked out or in trouble at school).  So, if you kid or kid's friend is in trouble and needs advice, who is going to give that advice?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics