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Home : Family : Teenagers : Talking about Dating with Teens
Talking about Dating with Teens
Your children are growing up and they are in their teenage years now. Soon dating is going to be the topic of the month and you are going to be faced with the task of talking about dating with your teen. Have you thought about what you are going to say during this heart to heart talk with your teen? No matter if you have a son or daughter, talking about dating is going to be important for forming relationships and trusting your teen while they are out on a date.
Discussion with your teen does not have to be difficult. You can talk with your teen about dating and the opposite sex during different occasions or you can try to do it all at once, which ever is most comfortable with the two of you. The important thing is that you start talking about dating, sex, and relationships from a very early stage in the game to be most effective.
Exchanging ideas, topics, opinions, and thoughts about the subject can be difficult at first but just keep thinking about what can happen that could be potentially bad, and this will be your motivation to get through certain topics. The benefits from your topics and conversations are going to follow your child for the rest of your life.
When should this talk start to take place? It really is going to depend on your child and the situation your child is facing. Sometimes there are children who are in schools with older children and are wise well beyond their years.
There are children who will need the dating and sex talk when they are ten or eleven, while other children who live in areas that are more rural or who are more innocent could have this conversation when they are twelve, thirteen or fourteen.
While is might seem scary, children are learning and getting to know more than we ever did when we were children. The world is constantly changing; our children are open to more sex, violence, and explicit materials online, on television and even in their schools. Talking with your children while you have the first chance to make the best impression is going to set your child�s teenage years off on the right foot.
If there are two parents that are talking to one child, one parent must know what the other parent has been talking about. You do not want to bombard your child all at one time or he or she will become a little overwhelmed with too much information at one time. You could approach subjects as they are on television, as they experience them in life, or as something comes up on the Internet screen that needs to be addressed. It is important that both parents are aware of what is going on in the teenager�s life.
How can you start your conversations with your teenager? You easily can start off by saying something along the lines of �I think you are getting to be the age now where you are getting interested in the facts of life and sexuality. I was wondering if you had any questions or if you need talk about anything more in detail that you don�t understand�
Or, if you see something on television that you want to stress to you teen that is wrong or that can be avoided, such as a man sleeping with two different women while dating each of them. You can tell your teenager how wrong this is, how feelings are never explained in the movies, or you could start the conversation about sexual diseases. Once you start interjecting your opinions about situations, you will find that your teen will listen and think about how your opinion applies to what they are seeing.
What are some of the topics that you can talk about with your teenager?
- You need to explain why you worry when teens are riding in a car alone.
- You need to explain why you worry about teens having sex. (Pregnancy or disease)
- Talk about what boys want
- Talk about what girls want
- What are the differences in no and yes
- Tell your teen they can call you day or night for a ride with no questions asked
- Make sure that your teen understands the pressures of sex, drugs and alcohol and how to avoid being �put� into situations that can be harmful.
- Talk about anything that you can with your child � what you think they are ready to know and what you think that they need to know more about so that they can make the right life choices.
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