I work with families who have children with all forms or autism and aspergers and today one woman said her 16 year old son was going on a “date”. Well sort of. A girl (older - 17) was going to pick him up (she can drive, he cant) and they were going to the library and some other stuff. Well the Mom asked to be able to meet the girl when she came to the house. The boy texted that to the girl… the girl texted back cancelling because she said she’s too shy to want to meet his mother.
Was the mother wrong?
Was the girl being weird?
I mean back in my day as a young man I always had to meet the girls parents. Why cant girls do the same now?
Perhaps it was just too much out of her comfort range. It’s one thing to meet someone you know for a date, quite another to have to meet someone you have never met. Meeting someone new is very uncomfortable for some people.
On the other side of this is things are different now. The date often met the parents because the date had to ring the doorbell. Using doorbells is generally not what happens now, but txting the person they are coming to see directly when they arrive.
No one was ‘wrong’ in any sense as I see it. She was uncomfortable and the mother was doing what she thought was ‘normal’. It is a learning process for both. Going forward with this girl, if there is a going forward, perhaps the mother would be willing to meet her at some later time if things get more serious.
Well I dont know. It certainly seems like a benign “date”. They were going to the library after going to a local food bank to sort out canned items. Not like a drive in or rave party.
I’m not sure it has anything to do with being on the spectrum. Or rather, her anxiety being so strong that she cancelled may have, but the divide between what Mom and teens feel is “normal” reflects my own experience.
When my son was a minor, I was able to leverage my parental rights to insist that I meet at least some of his friends, but he always thought I was really weird for it - much more than I felt with my parents. Now that he’s 22, I don’t meet any of his friends until it happens naturally at his birthday party or we bump into them on the street. Ad yes, most of it has to do with cell phones. They don’t need to ring the doorbell, true. But also, they create their social lives through these phones, which keeps their friendships very personal and private and out of the sphere of adult influence. (This makes me as anxious as the next worried mother, but I have to admit that Kids These Days are pretty awesome, so it must be working…)
And, to be honest, if I’d been able to avoid the whole “meet the parents” ritual as a teen, I would have. It’s horrible.
Also part of it may be that the teen girl is feeling out the relationship for what it is (dating or friends). Going out to the library together can go either way, a ‘get together’ or a ‘date’, which she could define later what category it is in. Meeting the ‘parents’ before has a much heavier tone of a ‘date’.
Also the son may be more eager to call it a date then the girl.
My take: The girl assumed they were just doing errands together. When she heard that his mother wanted to meet her, she thought, “socially awkward boy told his mother that we’re going on a date.” To forestall that, she gave him an excuse that he would relate to.
In my case, I like to meet my son’s friends, boys and girls. Doesn’t matter if it’s a date or not. It’s usually a quick and casual, “Hi, how’s it going. Have fun!” thing. Less than 30 seconds unless the kid is chatty. This seems to be the norm for most of his group of friends. He’s met at least one parent of most of his friends.
Just out of curiosity, what does this accomplish? 30 seconds of small talk will tell you exactly nothing about the person. I am not trying to argue here. I just don’t get it. Growing up, my folks knew all my friends, or at least their parents. Benefit of a small town.
I think there is a thought that even if we can’t identify everyone harboring evil thoughts, increasing the number of contacts with the family may possibly put those thoughts at bay. At the very least, they now know you can identify them.
