GainesvilleMoms.com

Sooooo glad I don't even have to think about this right now, but this is an interesting article for those who have teens.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/inside-the-min...ating-your-daughter/

well, my first thought is that the boys gave the answers they thought we would want to hear.

don't care what the article/study says, i know what a boy is thinking when he looks my daughter up and down...i also know what i'm thinking and i hope he has fast feet.

my daughter is the text book all american girl, very athletic, very smart and in my opinion, beautiful. she has tons of friends, girls and boys alike. i was really ok with this until she told me just before christmas that she needed some new bras. wow...she did! she went from barely needing a training/sports bra to a 34B. and now i notice boys really noticing her. she's in high school now and guess what, there are high school boys everywhere! i have a hard time grasping the thought that at 14, she is sitting next to a 18 year old boy in her tv production class.

the study is great if you want to be narrow minded but i'm choosing to be more cynical! i'd rather be on the offense than the defense when it comes to my baby girl...i know, i know, not a baby anymore...

Interesting article. And although my soon-to-be 14 year old honor student and school athlete has many very nice young men whom she is friends with, I just have to ask my husband (age 43) what went thru HIS head back when he was in middle school. And although HE was (and still is) a very nice man, he is the first to say that guys will try things and see just how far they'll be allowed to go.

Men/boys are physical creatures. Looks mean lots to them, although I believe they do pick their dates based on not just looks. You won't see any of the most popular, athetic boys dating ugly girls in middle school; that's the reality of the situation. The very attractive teens get LOTS of attention from boys; our daughter gets "asked out" many times a week. But she knows she cannot date until high school...AND....she knows that she is responsible for drawing the line in the dirt when it comes to just what a boy can and cannot do. She also knows that if a boy truly likes her and cares for her, saying "NO" to sex won't cause him to leave. Quality guys who truly care for someone can and will wait. I know that firsthand.

What is REALLY scary, though, is what our child told us last month. Her friends (all very popular, bright, most are athletic....) have said they are going to wait until they are SIXTEEN before they have sex. Our daughter and just one of the girls in the group stood up for waiting! They told the girls to consider boys "using them" and then talking about them badly with other boys. They also talked about what Christ wants. Although I was/am extremely proud of my independent daughter, I am sickened by the attitude of the other girls who PLAN to wait until age "sixteen." We parents need to do a better job not only TALKING with our girls (and boys) about sex, but we need to be better role models and we need to spend more time with our kids. These type of attitudes about sex don't occur overnight. They were years in the making! With disease, prenancy and "being used," we parents can't afford to fail our children!

Three years ago, I still had a teenage stepdaughter living at home. I took a "Parenting Teens" type class, because this daughter had recently lost her mother, and I really needed to step up my mothering in her mom's absence. I saw a DVD by Pam Stenzel and it was pro-life, but beyond that, it also relied heavily on pushing the message of the number of diseases you can incur from unsafe sex. It was alarming...years ago, back in "my day" there were only about 20 diseases...now it's something like 67. And growing. It was Christian-based, but also very practical and very grounded in facts and figures. It didn't promise eternal damnation for premarital sex, it told the cold hard facts of reality of what can happen, to both males and females, if you have unsafe sex with an infected partner.

It was an awesome DVD. I think it was called "Sex Has a Price Tag". Good stuff and vrey informative.

TripleA - that sounds like an awesome DVD. I'm going to try and find it.

In addition to all of the physical consequences of premarital sex, i've tried to instill in my daughter the emotional consequences of premarital sex. So far so good...

thanks again...

Oh, yeah, this DVD has that, too...real life stories are told about teen relationships that soured after sex....it's really an all-around excellent tool and has all the arguments against teen/pre-marital sex...the religious aspects, the pregnancy/abortion aspects, the STDs aspect...I'm on something of a hiatus from that now with only my three babies at home, but a re-fresher course will (unfortunately) be needed much sooner than old Mom here wants it to be!