plnnr, I agree with your handling of the situation every step of the way.
To each parent his or her own, but I think that 13 is way too young for serious sexual activity. A BJ is pretty serious in my book.
My wife and I have discussed plans for educating our kids about sex (thankfully, we have time…though not as much time as I had hoped!)
We plan on teaching our kids abstinence, but teaching safe sex as a back up plan.
Abstinence as an end all-be all just won’t work. I get that. But I am going to at least TRY to sell it for as long as possible in the hopes that it prolongs the inevitable.
But at an early age, we have decided we are going tell our kids about how to prevent pregnancies and STDs for “when you are MUCH older.”
I don’t want to give my kids sexual phobias, but I don’t want to walk in for a beer one day and see what plnnr saw!
Also, I don’t agree with the sentiment that if you tell them not to do it, they are going to do it anyway. That rational can be used to undermine ALL parental authority. I don’t need to pit to rebut that more, but I would need Great Debates. The phrase “that is what’s wrong with the world” should never be used in IMHO!
Finally, the Title of this thread just makes me LOL. Such a serious thread, but such a funny title. I picture an old Indian saying “That is Catcher of Trout. He supplies the tribe with fish. And that is Bringer of Water. He carries the tribe’s water from the mighty stream. And over there is Giver of…”
BTW, I don’t see the “you tell her or I will” as a punishment for giving a BJ. I see it as punishment for giving a bj where she got caught by her stepfather. And she should take responsibility for that action, just as plnnr suggests.
My daughter will be approaching that age in a few years, and I hope I would have your composure if put into a similar position.
I think you handled it perfectly, plnnr. I have been both the father of teenagers and the step-father of teenagers, including a teenage daughter.
For those of you who have never tried it, step-fathering is a delicate business. Unless you came into their lives at an extremely early age, things must be handled differently.
I think giving your SD the option of telling this to her mother herself is a fine idea. Kudos!
I’m 38 and can’t imagine talking to my parents about sex. But that’s because there’s no reason to. I don’t live in their house, and I’m no longer their responsibility.
I think plnnr did fine. Once any child in your care becomes sexually active, it’s time for a talk with the parents. SD may be ready to have sex or she may not. Just because she’s having it doesn’t mean she’s ready to deal with all the consquences. Her parents need to help her come to her own decision and make sure she has the right information (who knows what erroneous information her friends have told her).
My sex ed classes covered all the physical details but never dealt with the emotional aspect. I knew all about STDs and pregnancy risks, but I never knew how much of an emotional hit I’d take when a relationship with someone I’d been intimate with ended. Other girls never got the message that you don’t have to put out just to get guys to like you. Still others were branded with horrible reputations (totally unfair for girls, but it happens) just for one indiscretion. None of that was covered. It was all “if you’re going to have sex, here’s what you do.” No one discussed how you can tell if you’re ready.
I’m not saying that sex it bad, just that when I child is in your care, you have to help them evaluate all sides of their decision and make sure you address any misconceptions they have.
Another one on the side of plnnr. He has made the best of a very awkward situation. As mentioned before, the kids by doing this in such a manner as to be easily found out, made it so he knows about it, and now he feels a moral obligation that that the mother should know about it somehow(*), so he gives her the choice of bringing it up herself or he will.
As it sounds like Mr and Mrs plnnr are pretty well-adjusted parents, all this is likely to entail is great embarassment. Well, nobody dies of embarassment… but people do die of trying to avoid embarassment by not addressing possible risk factors.
(* And she should. If someone’s 13, it IS her parents’ business if s/he’s sexually active. Too many risks that can impact third parties. And the last thing you ever want a step-parent to be is a co-cospirator in a minor keeping important info from the legal parents.)
At the age of 29, I have to say that I would be mortified by the idea of telling my parents anything about cocks being sucked on couches. Or anywhere else, for that matter. (Doubly so for your parents.)
People talk about this like it’s some sort of new revalation; right-wingy types in particular like to blame Clinton. My teenage years came and went long before Clinton’s famous knob jobs, and I always thought that “sex” referred specifically to intercourse while “oral sex” was something else entirely. (Yes, I know it’s called oral sex; I put the term in the same category as “Near Beer” or “hamburger steak”.)
If you want to argue that teenagers these days are far more casual about oral sex than they used to be, that might be true.
I grew up pre-blue dress and my midwestern high school had the same value system. Oral sex was basically third base, and often the preferred method of keeping one’s virginity intact.
I think the difference in attitude isn’t so much about the former president arguing what is is, but some sort of cosmic shift to blowjob as common dating currency rather than part of what A Couple did. Instead of teenaged boys hoping and scheming and cajoling and wishing there’s flat out expectation, be just as easy to blame the availability of online porn with it’s implications that all women give head all the time as to lay responsibility with a politician. Which has more resonance with teenagers?
I think this was handled just right. Regardless of anybody’s opinions on whether this child is too young for sexual activity or not, this is clearly an oppurtunity for education and discussion. Much as it may embarrass the girl involved to discuss this with her mother, if the lines of communication can be opened, that can only be beneficial. I appreciate that many of the posters here would not discuss their sex lives with their parents, but perhaps if their parents had discussed the issue openly and nonjudgementally when they were thirteen, they might feel more comfortable talking with their parents now. I don’t think you can say that the girl was coerced, or didn’t know what she was doing, but now is the time to find out what she knows, to offer her information and support. Maybe then, when she is ready to have intercourse, she won’t be embarrassed to ask her mother to help her obtain birth control, rather than relying on her boyfriend to get condoms, or just hoping for the best, which occurs much more often then people like to admit.
Having the XX chromosomes myself, I, nor any other female I ever knew were never curious about it. But they (and I) did it or the boys would’ve never come near us again. And this went on well into adulthood. Not a lesson this girlshould be learning. Hey you wanted OPINIONS, and you got mine, which I had assumed was held by rational thinking people. Guess theres a dearth of them here.
See, I don’t understand that attitude, that fellatio is some kind of grim requirement that women feel they MUST perform if only to keep the attention and affection of men.
See, I’m a gay man. I’ll go out of my way to find a willing recipient for a blow job, because I LOVE to give them. It’s fun. It’s tasty (mmmmm…). And it’s kind of a freakishly powerful feeling knowing that you’re just about putting a guy on his knees with the sensations you’re causing.
This thread is bothering me more than it should. I’m still trying to organize my thoughts. This may be coming down to a generational gap, but when I was 13 back in the mid 70’s I had never even considered a bj. I was just at the point were I was noticing things were feeling good when brushing up against a counter top or something.
Of course there was no internet or cable and not even VCR’S except in school. I was definitely not emotionally ready for anything close to sex at that age. MY first kiss was at 14 and that only happened because the girl had to hit me over the head with a large clue stick. Even then my first sexual encounter was at 16 and probably because I was the first in my small town to have a car. ( ah! the joys of teenage fumbling around sex in the back seat of a 67 Impala) My daughter has just recently turned 15 and although she is physically developed in my opinion she acts younger, more like 13 or even 12 in some ways.
My ex insists she is not having sex as far as she knows… nice qualifier hon! In my opinion 13 is way too young to be giving bj’s, even if they have more access to the real world than I did.
This is becoming disjointed, sorry all. In summary, I think you handled it better than I would have plnnr
Well, we girls whispered about them–it was something boys forced you to your knees to do, and it was really really disgusting and something only desperate girls did who needed to hold onto a guy. And when I was 13, I didn’t quite understand what it was, let alone want to try it.
Changed my mind…but still…as a child, no way. We were still giggling about periods, which about a third of us hadn’t even gotten yet.
When I was 13 I wasn’t even allowed near boys! Hell, it was a concession that my parents let me have a boyfriend towards the end of highschool. And yeah I messed around and I’m sure they vaguely knew but I think that by age 17 I was significantly more advanced mentally than at the age of 13. For one thing, I had stopped wearing sweatpants, worked at a job, was waiting on college admissions from universities I wouldn’t have the chance to attend as a teenage mom, a better understanding of finances etc. etc… These are things I didn’t even think about at the age of 13.
Also, some of us that get the “wait till marriage” rap/kids shouldn’t be having sex stuff read to us constantly don’t turn out to become fundamentalist/messed up about sex/crazy/failures/rebellious hookers orwhathaveyou. More often than not it just ends up in delayed sexual activity-above the national average, even if the person doesn’t wait till marriage (although I will admit that at least in the cases I have seen of this it’s reinforced by coming from a traditional Eastern culture). I guess I’m still reeling from the idea that discouraging your very young children from having sex is some sort of “controversial” or traumatizing idea.
I’m not sure which is worse: that the boys you went to school with were such slimeballs, or that the girls saw themselves in such a negative light that they were willing to demean themselves like that for a boy who obviously didn’t respect them.
Not that I think BJ’s are demeaning … but they are if you don’t really want to do it, and are doing it only because some boy has told you he’ll dump you if you don’t.
I would have laughed in any love interest’s face that treated me that way and promptly dumped him, and I had no self esteem at that age.
I’d just like to voice my agreement with this. From what I can gather, my mother comes from the same background as that of anu-la1979, and although I was never told that it’s better to wait til marriage, I think my parents always gave me the indirect message that you should consider all the possible consequences very carefully before you choose to have sex for the first time. Only do it if it makes you feel happy, not just to keep someone else happy.
