come on now. is it?
It isn’t abnormal.
It’s fine. For most kids.
Parents obviously have to be involved. It’s not like they’ll be “dating” without a ride and a driver.
I’d say listen, stay close and limit after school meet ups.
Happened all the time at my school when I was that age. It was much less serious than even an young teen relationship. It often would just be a school thing, where you’d hold hands and maybe steal a kiss.
Where it can get hairy is an age difference, as even a 9th grader would have a different expectation. But two seventh graders? I wouldn’t worry too much.
I had a GF in 7th grade and another in 8th grade but it was not a GF by what we would consider one to be in late high school.
We were “going steady” (whatever that meant…pretty sure I did not know) and would hold hands on occasion. A minor kiss here and there (barely a peck…not making out). Mostly it was play acting and harmless (we were the same age within a few months).
ETA: I will say my first make-out session was at a 6th grade party playing spin the bottle. I had to go in a closet with a girl. She stuck her tongue in my mouth. That really surprised me at the time…I did not know that was a thing.
I had a girlfriend in 3rd grade. Wasn’t my first. But after that I went for a long time without. Around 7th-8th grade other kids starting doing couples connections, and it really got my hopes up that I’d have that once again, and soon.
I’m not sure I fully understand the question, though. What is this “normal” you speak of? Do you mean normative or do you mean healthy? Are you one of those people who think it’s unhealthy to be atypical? Would you have disapproved of me and my 3rd grade girlfriend? I still remember a teacher who did.
Yes, it’s normal.
Of course it’s normal. I wonder what our new friend @SaSaLeLe2011 is thinking and why?
FYI, we normally suggest folks but a bit more effort into starting a thread. Or come back promptly and provide their perspective as well as simply a question.
Moderating:
Please make your OPs a little more robust in the future. I almost closed this instead of moving it.
Back in the late 60s early 70s in my neighborhood, two of my friends were pregnant at 13, and one was having sex in grade school, at age 11.
Its normal to have crushes on people, and boyfriend/ girlfriend or bf/bf and gf/gf is a normal thing.
Normal is a setting on your washing machine.
Is it typical? I’d say most 7th graders don’t have girlfriends or boyfriends, but it certainly isn’t unusual for that to happen.
My son, who is in 5th grade (and, as far as I know, doesn’t have a girlfriend) has told me that there’s class gossip about who is dating, even at that age (10 - 11 years old).
By 7th grade (12 - 13 years old), puberty has kicked in for most of the kids. As I recall, though, the only ones who claimed a boy or girlfriend were the best looking kids - those of us who became awkward and gangly, or had a huge outbreak of acne, had to wait to high school (or beyond) before we started dating.
For those who are starting to date, I wouldn’t be so assured that those kids are limiting themselves to harmless hand holding and light kisses.
With the internet, I’d expect that the kids have been exposed to explicit content by that age. Maybe that’s wrong on my part, but it’s certainly what I would assume. And I’d plan accordingly (I.e. kids need the sex talk)
To hear the guys in my junior high locker room tell it, NOT having a girlfriend in 7th grade is kind of abnormal. This was circa 1973.
Not if you’re a 30-year-old man.
IANA parent but I am a geezer. So I’m knowingly on thin ice here. But I’ll heartily second @Moriarty’s comments just above.
Whatever was typical back in the day is not what’s typical now.
Kids are entering the biological side of puberty earlier than 20, 40, or 60 years ago when we did it. And they have far more exposure to the wider world of everything, not just sex, due to the internet. Not to mention the consequences of the greatly reduced prudery of ordinary mainstream TV, much less the various streaming channels unhindered by even a whiff of FCC oversight.
They may not be any more mentally / emotionally mature than we were at that same age, but they certainly have more knowledge to be immaturely confused and curious about.
Kids need the sex talk, or better a batch of little sex talks, way before you think they’re actually going to do anything about it; and way before they probably are doing anything about it. They should definitely have a fair amount of accurate info well before 7th grade.
And much of the available “knowledge” is wrong. (Which was also true when we were that age.) So it’s particularly important to make sure they get accurate info early; instead of assuming ‘modern kids know all of that already’. (Which is not what I think LSL was doing; but I have occasionally heard some form of ‘I don’t need to have talks I find embarrassing because they have the Internet.’)
– Young kids don’t all mean the same thing by ‘having a girlfriend’. Talks should go both ways: listen (don’t interrogate in a critical fashion) to find out what the particular kid means by it.
Quite right.
My point was that 50 years ago we had kids from a higher grade or two as our fount of sexual knowledge. And maybe somebody with a “cool” older cousin who was 19. So any resemblance to accurate info was purely accidental.
Kids today still have all that, but also access to wiki, to all sorts of grown up (not “adult”) chat like we’re having right now, lots more vid & written literature showing courtship, dating, and all the rest. And yes, they also have access to infinite free porn.
What they lack as much as ever, is a social or emotional context to put all that info into. That’s were real, and really involved, adults come in.
And as you say, the wise parent has been de-mystifying gender differences and all things relational and sexual since the kid was WAG 5 years old. OTOH, if your standard 12yo is suddenly noticing that the utterly alien species called [boys / girls] exist and are mysteriously fascinating around the crotch area, well, that battle for a healthy and nurturing sexuality was lost several years ago.
GREAT balls of fire!!
Yeah, the numbers don’t align perfectly, but … still. Well played, Thudlow.
50 years ago, in the public schools I attended, we had been exposed to the entire FSH / LH / estrogen / progesterone cycling and where in the anatomy the sperm cells were developed and what portions of human plumbing were involved in each portion of the operation starting with arousal and culminating in babies being born.
The stuff they didn’t teach was feelings — the vulnerabilities of interacting with someone you’re having sex with and all the intensities it creates, the various concerns about getting hurt and how that in turn makes people do defensive things that can hurt others, and all that. Or, at an earlier age, the basic fact of sexual appetite and that it’s normal, we didn’t get that. (I did eventually put the proverbial two and two together on my own).
Echoing what others have already said: not sure if “normal” is the right word, but “typical” is certainly the case.
Even 36 years ago, when I was in 7th grade, by the time we were at about this point in the school year (i.e., spring), a significant number of the kids in my class were already 13. And, as has been noted, on average, American kids begin puberty even earlier now than they did in 1978.
In my class, by this point in 7th grade, there were several “couples” that had been established, among pairings of the popular kids in the class. Those “boyfriend/girlfriend” relationships didn’t last very long, though there was probably some level of experimentation going on (or, at least, there were rumors that such experimentation was going on). At the end of the 7th grade school year (so, early June, back then), one of the girls in the class hosted a party at her house, which featured slow dancing.
So, yeah, absolutely typical.
This is why I say parent, be involved. If your child is struggling with “why do I get that feeling over a like gendered person and all my other friends like opposite sex?”
If you’re aware of what your child is doing and where they are you can see the issues coming up. And talk. Talk talk talk. You’ll be doing a whole encyclopedia of talking before your 7th grader gets to full adulthood. And then maybe have to keep talking. I have a 30yo I still have to have “we need to talk about this” moments.
I say, OP you’re lucky you even know about it. Kids in early teenage are very secretive and will boldface lie to you.
Don’t shut them down. Listen. And Talk talk talk. And listen more.
You got one shot at this time in their lives. You’ll make mistakes. It’s not the end of the world when you do.
You’ll never get so tired of talking in your life as this. In the end you may not get a big reward. But you may create a healthy human being.