Quote From: suziabelSo my husband and I thought we would be new age parents and let our 14 year old daughter go out with a 16 yr. old boy. It was actually more my idea not his it was supposed to be 16 (instead of her doing it behind our backs) It has been 10 months and they have broken up twice and gotten back together each time. He is totally out of her social league as far as their interests go but we did not pass judgement and were ok with it and always told her that he needs to be respectful to her. Everything seemed ok till this weekend. For about the last 3 months she has been sitting around and waiting on the weekends for him to call and make plans at the last minute. Well it seems that there was a friend whom she has(had?) who is a boy and they were texting and the boyfriend found out, but the boyfriend had been riding around with other girls while our daughter waited on him. So he broke up with her and I happened to be reading her text messages and he was texting her that she was a slut etc. Yesterday while we were gone shopping he came over and cried and told her he would change, so now they are back together again. HELP, she confesed to us that she loves him and we are so worried that he is controling her, but now what??????????????????????????? we tried to talk to her but she just won't listen!!!
Well first off, it was a good decision to let her date at that age. Here it is quite normal (in the Netherlands) and it will help your daughter learn how she must form a healthy relationship when she grows older. It also says that you trust your daughter which will give her more confidence.
As I said it is a learning process, it won't go right on the first try (how unfortunate that might be.) Best thing to do is not only say what he does bad or good (don't only speak bad of him, it makes you unbelievable.) But let her think about it. So don't give the answers but let her think about what she thinks. Let her grow an awareness of what he is doing.
This will help her form her own opinion and make her grow stronger in a relationship so that she might not tollerate his behaviour. Also empower her when she does not tolerate negative behaviour from him but also empower her response to behaviour that is positive from him (because she needs to learn what it means to be in a relationship, how she should respond etc and again only emphazising his negatives makes you unbelievable.)
But no matter what keep an eye out for her, see if there's anything going on that goes way out of line. Step in if needed but remember that it is a grave intervention that only should be done if there are no alternatives. If you have to do that she will probably hate you for a while and she might try to see him behind your back (forbidden fruit always tastes much better)
I hope this will help you,
oet Gäöl
