Because you can’t control your husband, so you think you should be able to control your daughter?
If you can’t control him, why do you think you should be able to control her? And why do you think you need to? Your duty as a mother is to teach your kids how to fly, not chop their wings off.
ETA This post is in response to
I think this is why you are feeling attacked by some posters:
When you use language like ‘she is on lockdown’, we don’t know what that means, so we have to draw our own conclusions on what that means.
The way in which you are typing your posts makes you come across as quite manic, stressed, and hyper. This makes your posts more likely to be seen as stronger than you may intend.
There seems to be pretty general agreement that 13 years old is a common age for starting relationships, so whilst you are expressing outrage that your daughter is engaging in sexual behaviour, we are all thinking ‘well, that’s what I was doing at that age.’
Okay. Okay. This is good. This is starting to be something we can actually work with. The problem here, as I see it, isn’t with your daughter, it’s with your husband. You feel that the two of you have different parenting styles, and you feel like you have to cave into his style to present “a united front” for your daughter. Does that seem about right?
Here’s what I have to say about that: It is important for children to know that both parents love them and want them to stay safe. It is important for you not to directly contradict, subvert, go against, or help your daughter break your husband’s rules. However, she’s old enough now to know that there’s more than one way to do things. There’s no reason you can’t be “the good cop” and remain sympathetic to her about what she’s feeling and struggling with as a teenager. The good cop doesn’t let the perp out of jail - she’s still a cop - but the good cop has the freedom and ability to empathize with the perp.
“Oh, dear. You lied and snuck out? Well, you know what the house rules are. Darn it. I hate it when I break the rules at work and have to [stay late/explain things to my boss/do my work over/don’t get paid]! It’s so frustrating, and I always wish I could take it back, maybe have a time-turner like in Harry Potter and get a do-over. But, of course, that’s not the way it works, is it. heavy sigh Well, what would you like to do this weekend while you’re grounded? Should we try a new recipe together? Maybe we can finally clean out the basement and put some stuff aside for Goodwill.”
Frankly, I’m not sure there’s much you can do to change your husband, but there’s a lot you can do to better your relationship with your daughter.
To answer the question in the OP. I think it truly depends on the maturity of the kid. I am the father of a 15 1/2 year old girl.
Her first real BF is her current one who she started dating at about age 14. I knew she was interested in him but she insisted he was just a friend, but my wife caught her sitting in his lap one time at a kids party we had at our house. We didn’t react as it was innocent, she was just sitting in his lap.
I thought it was cute how she told me. She walks to the bus stop each day and texts me when she gets there and when she gets on the bus. So one day about a week after the above episode she texts me as usual but adds this at the end of the text ‘hey how well do you like Will (the BF) and would you still like him if you knew he was my boyfriend? I wanted you to know because I wanted to invite him over this weekend and I didn’t feel right without you knowing’
I like Will, he is a good kid. I also know he wants to get into my daughter’s pants. He is a 15 year old (or will be here this Sunday). I was 15 and I know what boys like to do.
However I am very confident that if they decide to go down that path, they will take the necessary precautions. We have discussed sex and stds and prevention, etc since my daughter was 10. We even had a discussion last night at dinner as she was telling us there is a girl in her grade (9th) who is pregnant right now! So it isn’t a taboo subject and I honestly feel confidant that she would come to us–or go to where she needs to, to get on the pill if she goes down that path.
Now do I want her to go down that path. Hell no. I still think she is too young, but it will happen. She is very mature for her age and is a good kid, but I still think 15 is too young. But what age is the right age? Hell who knows. I was 17 as I recall and looking back that was too young too. I have a good friend who works for the school district who tells me that a very large percentage of 15 years have had sex already, so I am not so naive that I don’t think it will/might/already has happened.
In some ways you sound like a good friend of mine, well at least his wife. She has a 13 year old girl and is in total denial that the girl is growing up. The changes are clearly happening on her daughter and her daughter has confided in my daughter that she likes boys–but she is afraid to tell her mom and dad. In my opinion that girl is headed for a teen pregnancy.
You have to be open with your kids in my opinion. I am not my daughters friend, I am her father. But I also need to provide a nuturing home where she feels comfortable telling me things, without sneaking around my back. That is why I liked the text message, it shows that she respects the concept of my home but she still feels she needs to have my approval, but she knows I wouldn’t berate or belittle her over stating her concerns.
Good luck and hope all works out for you and your daughter. It is a trial isn’t it
lol, of course you’re right. I don’t mind, in this instance, putting up a little resume, though. I do think that being a [del]parent [/del] primary caregiver is totally different from being an older sibling, or an aunt or youth pastor, and there are some questions where non-caregiver answers need to be taken with a large grain of salt. Theory and reality are often at odds.
In this case, I was chuckling to myself as I wrote the reply too the challenge. If there’s one thing I’m “qualified” in, it’s freaking parenting advice! 
Young buck sniffing around your daughter? And he is older than she is? I think he needs to have a long talk with you, while you clean your guns and sharpen your knives. Maybe tell him about those flashbacks from Desert Storm you’ve been having and how he maybe looks like an Iraqi soldier sometimes…
Whynot and Hakuna Matata have both given you great advice. Your daughter is exactly where she should be in a development sense and what you really need to work on (and I’ll be frank it’s much harder starting now) is making her feel safe talking to you about what’s going on in her life.
My husband was fond of a quote from a movie (the title escapes me) -
You know, she’s my daughter and I love her and I really don’t mind going back to jail if it’s necessary.
I think the problem is with the way you are communicating with the board. For example, you wrote: “My daughter turned 13 this last Sat. Was caught skipping school Monday. Seen with an older guy making out!!! She is on lock down etc…but what I am wondering is what is the right age for her to actually HAVE a boyfriend?? Not go on dates, just have a boy over that she likes???”
It sounds like what you meant was: “My daughter turned 13 this last Saturday. We caught her skipping school on Monday. Then she was seen with an older guy making out! She is on “lock down” now, but what I am wondering is what is the right age for her to actually HAVE a boyfriend? Not going on dates necessarily but just have a boy over that she likes?”
The second version fills in missing information/grammar and removes excessive punctuation which makes it easier to read and comes across as much calmer than the first version.
As far as your question about your daughter goes I think remaining calm and approaching her as someone who won’t judge her and will be happy to answer questions would be best and offer to help her make the smartest possible decisions. If that involves taking her to the ob/gyn that is great but it could also involve helping her practice saying no to things that make her uncomfortable or helping her learn to research information online and at the library so that she never feels like she needs to know something and doesn’t have a way to obtain that knowledge without embarrassing herself.
Put her on birth control. Hate to scare you, but many, many girls lose their virginity around 13 or 14 (myself included).
If she is skipping school and lying, she is too young to have a boyfriend. Telling the truth and going to school are responsibilities for children. Having a boyfriend is a responsibility for a young woman.
And, to my certain knowledge, it is not true that every girl reacts to limits on her romantic activities by lying and becoming a slut.
There is such a thing as being open-minded, and also such a thing as being so open-minded that your brain falls out.
Regards,
Shodan
Really? Because I couldn’t disagree more. The whole post smacks of internet diagnosing- where every minor problem is seen as indicative of some dramatic failure as a spouse/mother/citizen. You can tell because it suggests that lying means that something is “seriously fucked up,” when anyone that’s been around kids or ever was a kid knows that kids lie to their parents all the time. It’s about as seriously fucked up as eating dinner at 5:30.
Second, it smacks of misogyny accusations, totally missing the fact that the OP’s female. So that couldn’t be more off-base.
Third, skipping school is not ok, especially when the kid isn’t even in high school. The punishment is deserved.
Finally, the parent is just freaking out because the kid is growing up. That happens to all parents. And the question about when to allow boyfriends isn’t unreasonable. The kid is 13, not 15, an age where it’s clearly OK to start dating.
So exactly what parts of constanze’s posts do you find to be accurate?!
My favorite part was “no she was not your little girl…” What a complete load of garbage.
But let’s not get in the way of all this great advice and back-slapping these “experts” are dishing out here, Chessic.
FTR if it was my daughter she would have been grounded for skipping school. I think Shodan is correct in his assessment. If my daughter was doing those things my reaction would have been very different. But to me my daughter sending me the text was the sign I needed that she had the maturity to have a boyfriend.
Lying to me would have been bad and the school thing would have been super bad. As I mentioned in my other post, I am her father not her best friend. I do think you have to be open minded but not a pushover.
There’s a lot of self-righteous outrage being dished out here. The OP was asking an honest question.
Children are a robust phenomenon and thrive on a variety of parenting styles.
If the kid has hit puberty and you haven’t started an ongoing dialog about what it means to be on the road to becoming an adult, it’s time to start.
Set boundaries. 13 is old enough to start having structured dates. (Heck, when I was 17, the 13 year old across the street was pregnant and that was 30 some years ago.)
(No kids, Psych degree, started babysitting when I was 4. Can I get a back seat parenting certificate? 
)
This is the best advice in the thread so far.
I’m a fifty-ish father of adults now, but I was once a 15 year old boy who was just screwing the shit out of my 13 year old girlfriend, right under the nose of her very strict Catholic parents. How we never got preggers I’ll never know.
Open dialog, build and re-enforce a good relationship with your daughter, hope for the best. But back it up with insurance that she won’t make a foolish decision that she lives with the rest of her life.
13 year olds are not well know for making rational, well thought out decisions. You are her parent and you still have some decisions left to make for her. Hoping that a good talk with her will change the entire biological drive of the human race is to wait for disaster.
You will eventually feel better about this.
Define “slut” please.
Why is 15 “clearly OK” to you? What about the people to whom that’s still too young? What about the people who, as EmAnJ pointed out, are no longer virgins by that age?
You have The Talk with teens before they’re having sex (and at risk for pregnancy/STDs) not after.
Which opens the possibility that she will bring home a guy who replies, “Jail is for wimps. I did actual time in the State Penn’s Ad-Seg.”
A female who allows her self to be sexually degraded and humiliated in order to earn male attention while her own needs and desires are ignored.