I don’t think it’s so much that parents forget what it was like to be a teenager, it’s that they learned their lesson about it and don’t really understand how to communicate it. Afterall, I’m sure for most of us, at least at the time, that first crush or first love ultimately ended in heartbreak. I think, in fact, that they very much remember that and possibly want to just save them learning some painful lesson, but just don’t really realize that the only way to learn that sort of lesson is through the heartbreak that goes with it.
That is, I think a lot of people, parents or not, remember how they learned a lesson, but don’t do so good of a job of realizing which parts of the lesson are essential to learning it and which aren’t, and they skip over major plot points and get right to the happy ending and moral of the story.
I think another part of it is that they may be their kids, but they’re still different people growing up in a different environment. Lessons of love will tend to have a similar theme, but can a parent who graduated 20 years ago really relate as well on how these things work to a teen today where the internet and social media are ubiquitous to their kids? Hell, today entire relationships can begin and end that way. Hell, I know plenty of people not much older than me who still think internet dating for adults is weird.
I’m not sure I agree that the only way to learn the lesson is to go through the heartache. My puppy love cases were relatively painless comparatively.
If I remember back, girls had four sorts of parents.
Those that “forgot” what it was like to be a teen and didn’t encourage wallowing and told it like it is - without “understanding” - but with support.
Those who believed that “Mommy and Daddy’s little girl” was still little and that wasn’t a bridge they’d need to cross until her mid-twenties and so communicated very little one way or the other - but engaged in overprotective behavior which often cast all boys as predators.
Those who remembered how it was and co-wallowed.
Those who were oblivious or didn’t care - but not in the overprotective sort of way, in the neglectful sort of way.
Those of us who had parents of the first type seem to have weathered our puppy love stages better than the other three. Don’t get me wrong, it was still drama central - but we were less naive and bounced back faster. So maybe we still needed to learn the lesson for ourselves, but we had done the prereq work that made the lesson move faster?
And that seems to be the case with the girls in my life now - everyone from my college intern staffers to my twelve year old Girl Scouts.
I just cannot for the life of me understand a situation in which it would be ok to derogate the feelings of another person. I’ve worked with plenty of teenagers who’ve been through the throes of teenage love and I never once felt the need to tell them that what they were feeling wasn’t “real love” or wasn’t “serious”. I just doesn’t make any sense. If it didn’t hurt they wouldn’t cry, if they hadn’t loved it wouldn’t hurt.
The alternative to disparaging comments about the nature of their feelings is not to wallow along with them. You can just nod and say “yes, sometimes love can hurt” or something, and let them know that in your experience it got better after a while.
I have a boy, but my main message is “what ever you feel, use condoms.”
We’ve had some chats about how powerful emotions take over your brain (crushes, sex, anger) and how maybe you take a couple of deep breaths before you say or do something and try to get your brain back. Sometimes that works for him. Sometimes it doesn’t. He’s had his heart broken (he’s 16.) It was sucky and painful, but it was a teaching moment about how it won’t always be that way and how crushes hurt more when they are your first ones and so forth.
I’m not that parent who tries to be friends.
Although if I had a girl, I’m not sure my main message would be any different.
There’s a difference between love that is “real” and love that is “permanent”. The kid can certainly feel the former, what she’s probably not (but maybe is) experiencing is a permanent love that will last her lifetime. Not because she’s hormonally or neurologically incapable of love, but because she’s never been in a *relationship *before, and she’s going to screw it up sooner or later. Most of us need to practice relationships before we get good enough at them to have a lasting one.
My advice to my son was to explore emotional relations and the nitty-gritty of how to have a relationship with someone else, before bringing sex into the equation because, as I put it, “sex makes everything more complicated, especially when you’re still learning how to do it.”
Did he love his first girlfriend? I don’t know. He seemed to. He smiled a lot when he talked of her, he texted her all hours of the night, he couldn’t get enough time with her. It looked from the outside like it looks when my friends fall in love, so why shouldn’t I let him call it love?
But when she started talking about him moving to her state for college and the white picket fence and all - and they were 15 years old - he was smart enough to run like hell. I demanded he be a gentleman about it and *tell *her why he was no longer going to be in a relationship with her (being a long distance thing, his plan was to just stop returning her calls and emails), because I thought he could use the practice at breakups.
But other than that, I was there for hugs and sympathy, as well as reassurances that this pain would pass, and there would be another attempt later, which would probably also fail miserably until he’d navigated enough of the pitfalls of relationships to anticipate and eliminate enough of them to have a long term relationship work.
Its not a parents job to pander to their childrens, quite frankly, drama queens, outlook to life.
(And thats most if not all kids at that age)
If they do so the kids tend to grow into immature adults who need instant gratification in all things, and as a result have unhappy lives because they can’t cope with the real world.
How many times have we heard teenage children telling us how they simply MUST have this, that or the other or they’ll simply die, let alone their latest crush which gets blown out of all proportion if encouraged by soppy parents.
At that age they’re simply older children, not smaller adults.
They are not emotionally mature.
Its the parents job to help their kids by using their own experience of being teenagers not to take the ups and downs of puberty as life or death, trauma inducing disasters.
Pandering to children hinders their development, hinders the maturing process, and causes them more unhappiness, now and in the long run.
We know how kids feel but, kids don’t know how they will feel as an adult, though they think they do.
They think that they’re emotionally mature now.
Its not a 50/50 process where the childs ideas are as valuable a contribution as your own, you are there to advise, guide and educate.
Unless of course you are only the equal of your child in maturity, in which case you should be asking yourself the question, “Should I really be a parent in the first place ?”
This is probably not the "fluffy " answer that some people want to hear, but its not about what makes YOU feel better as a parent, not about whats easiest for YOU to carry out, but whats best for the kid even if they don’t appreciate it at first.
They will as they grow up and they’ll be grateful to you.
And thats when you get your reward, their happiness.
I have a teenaged daughter who thinks she’s in love. I say thinks because she tells her boy she loves him and gets a cute and sappy over the phone, but some of the crap she’s pulled on him is not the stuff you do to someone you love. I’m not proud of those behaviors and we’ve talked about those choices.
I’d say teenagers have strong emotions and can care a great deal for each other, but at this point there’s more to love than feeling a strong attraction to and/or enjoying their company. At least I don’t think my daughter has ever felt real romantic love. who knows about any other teens.
Anyway, I don’t go around telling my daughter she’s not in love, but I also don’t go around wallowing in the drama either. I feel like I’m trying to sound like an expert here. I’m not. My daughter has made some pretty doufus moves when it comes to love. I don’t get it. I never had a boyfriend as a teenager, so I’m pretty much stumped when it comes to this girl that can’t live without one. (and yes, she’s been to therapy and it did help some. However, she’s still a cute geek girl and there’s always at least one guy chasing her.)
I guess I just sympathize with Dan. It’s hard to watch your kids making stupid moves and not want to step in and try to at least talk about where they’re going wrong.