Anonymous wrote:My son (a senior) received a personal (verbal) invitation each year from three different NCS girls.

Anonymous wrote: the bar should be pretty high for refusal if someone works up the nerve to ask you out. In fact, women complain all of the time about not being taken out for dates, rather than "hang-outs" or "hook-ups", but it appears that they only want to say yes to someone they already know they like. No wonder kids have a warped sense of dating.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My son dated Holton girls. He is a senior and has never attended a NCS function. In fact, he declines the yearly invitations.

This sounds like bad manners. I teach my children that there must be an emergency, or a feeling of threatened safety or some other very good reason to decline a date invitation. Can you share your rationale?[/quote]

Of course, it depends on the situation, but I think this type of advice has the potential to be very harmful in the long run, particularly when it comes to young women. For too long, women have been socialized to say "yes" when a boy (or girl) invites. This undermines their self-confidence to say "no" when the stakes increase later in life. Children need to be encouraged to trust their instincts and preferences from a young age.

Rather than teach children to "just say yes" unless they can specify why they don't want to do something, I prefer the route of teaching them to respect their own instincts and to communicate with the other party in a clear, respectful, and polite way. "Thank you so much, but I can't attend," is nearly always sufficient.

Of course, I realize that some children need to be encouraged to go beyond their comfort level, but I think teaching them they have to go somewhere simply because someone else wants them to is generally not advisable.

That said, refusing to attend an event just because it is a school you don't want to associate with seems pretty silly.