Sunday, September 23, 2007

Cast Your Vote

If you've visited my site recently, then you may have noticed the poll in my sidebar and, judging from my stat counter, a lot of you have chosen to ignore the poll. This is real, people! Take the g-damn poll!

Two girls from Lizzie's clique surreptitiously went on a double date with two boys from another clique. Naturally, I'm pulling my hair out thinking that Lizzie will be the next girl bitten by the puberty bug. I know it's inevitable, but if you're the parent of a tween, then you know the depths of my anxiety. So, spill. Leave me a comment or take the poll. I'm interested in what y'all think. No, really.

3 comments:

Zuska said...

I voted YES, and wished there was something more adamant. Like:

ABSOLUTELY !!!!!! NO CHANCE IN HELL!!!

The puberty bug does not have to result in dates. I mean, puberty's been happening earlier than dating for a long time. You have crushes. You write notes. You scribble hearts on your note books. Perhaps a boy asks you if you want to "go out with him" which just means you say hi in the halls more often. Not that you go OUT, on a DATE.

Yikes.

I'm pretty sure this hasn't happened here, but our school is really pretty small (60 kids in each grade), and the kids have known each other for so long, and we didn't have much of a "girls are icky!" thing going on in the younger grades. So there are plenty of cross-gender friendships, and a "date" would be artificial and forced. I think.

But what do I know. I'm just a mom.

Yet, truth or dare last night at my 6th graders sleep over consisted of ice down shirts and questions like "what's the most embarrassing thing your mom does around other people." So I may just be dealing with a group who is a wee behind.

Anonymous said...

You need to turn on Lifetime. If your gut instincts don't convince you, watch the three movies running on there right now about middle school/early high school kids having oral sex parties and ending up with all sorts of STDs, including HIV in one of the movies. Holy crap! I say no. My parents wouldn't let me date until 16 and then they drove me and picked me up.

LawSchoolMom said...

@zuska: despite the large size of our school, the kids are definitely still in their "elementary school" clique, so they do know each other. I actually think that makes it easier for them to date - the parents know and trust each other and, consequently, give their kids a LOT of unsupervised freedom.

Yep, there are plenty of boy/girl friendships and Lizzie even had a crush on a boy last year, but we are adamantly (HELL NO!) against dating right now.

I don't think Em and her friends are behind at all. I think they represent the majority of early tweens (mine included) and these other girls of whom I blog are just maturing much, much faster. Unfortunately, these other girls are Queen Bees and my Lizzie is a bit of a follower.

@pt-lawmom: We don't have cable tv but I DO remember watching KIDS (1995) and that movie deeply affected me. It's such a fine line between being the parent your daughter can come to about boy issues and actually being a parent.

I'm careful to keep the lines of communication open but I know I would TOTALLY FREAK OUT if she were attending oral sex parties.