A mother’s heart is broken over her daughter’s inappropriate relationship with a boy from the Youth Group. What is she to do now?
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Question: Teen Dating
From: Vicki
Hi Dr.Leman, love your podcast & your books. I just listened to your advice on the last podcast and feel my husband and I did encourage our 17-year-old daughter to invite the young man from youth and others to hang in our basement with minimal supervision. However, through a misplaced love letter(floor in camping cabin) we discovered they had been inappropriately touching one another just around the corner from their friends!!! We can’t get over the boldness. We also thought we did a great job with purity training. I took her twice to hear Dannah Gresh @ True Woman and other training @ church. The parents of the young man had been monitoring FB and found inappropriate letters from my daughter, so we met to discuss ceasing any group outing besides youth. What would your advice be?
Vicki
Answer:
- You can take your kids to all the purity trainings, but in the end of the day, kids will be kids.
- Relationships will grow.
- Yes, do the trainings. Set POSITIVE EXPECTATIONS.
- In my experience, church kids also engage in petting and sex.
- There are two theories out there on how to deal with issues like this:
- Slow leak approach and this will end out disastrously.
Take the problem by the horns: get the parents and both kids together in a room. Share your disappointment at their lack of self-control and challenge their thinking. Discuss the long-term consequences. Give them facts to think about. Revisit what a 15 year old girl giving birth would look like.
Place positive expectations on them. Challenge them that if they really love one another, they will respect one another and ultimately know that God’s blessing on their relationship in the future will come when they follow his guidelines (which bring protection). - Remember, they could someday be married. Keep this in mind when you have this discussion.
- Since you cannot stop them from getting together, no matter how many limitations you put on them, encourage them to be together in your home. Make it a fun and safe place.
- And, I would never put one of my daughters on the pill. There are so many other dangers out there like STD’s.
- It all goes back to trust and keeping a relationship with your child.
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