I did know a 13 year old girl who would have shown me her tits if I’d have asked, and she did have issues. (Lots of them, including hygiene, and she’s was pretty freakin’ hideous.) Just a thought that this girl might not be very attractive and that’s why your son refused.
Still, whatever the reason is, it’s good that he did turn her down.
I go with the idea of a “trap” too.
Had the boy said yes, she would most likely have screamed ‘pervert’ at him and run off.
Are you a parent, Evil Captor?
There are some things (and this is one of them) where it is definitely NOT okay to let them figure it out on their own. Continuing with Cartooniverse’s analogy, just because the plumbing is in place does not mean the house is ready for occupancy.
Sexuality is an incredibly complex thing, and I am not going to raise my son to think this is an okay way to treat females. The physical act is just part of it, and I would rather my 13 year old son not begin to explore this aspect of his humanity until he is emotionally capable of handling it.
If that makes me a prude, fine. I do not want my son to become a teenaged father or pick up some disease because he felt he was “ready.” Parental guidance still counts for something, and doing something just because “it feels good” is not a good enough reason. He is not old enough yet to understand all the consequences.
Yeah, having vivid memories of the eighth grade, my initial impression is that the girl was baiting him on a dare. If he said “yes, show me your tits” the response would have probably been “Ewwww! You really ARE a perv! We knew it!”
I remember the other (mean) girls in my class doing those kind of experiments to embarass and humiliate the boys.
Ivyboy’s response shows the kind of class that takes the wind out of the sails of mean-spirited girls like that.
SLUT BOMBARDMENT sounds like a nifty idea for an arcade game. Of course, I’d probably let the sluts win.
Yes. The notion that parenthood automatically turns you into a moral conservative zombie is greatly overrrated.
There are some things (and this is one of them) where it is definitely NOT okay to let them figure it out on their own. Continuing with Cartooniverse’s analogy, just because the plumbing is in place does not mean the house is ready for occupancy.
Sure, you gotta give them guidance, but if you think your kid isn’t going to be on his own sexually someday, and doing some figuring out, you are sadly mistaken. After 18 your parental powers are vanquished, legally speaking.
Sexuality is an incredibly complex thing, and I am not going to raise my son to think this is an okay way to treat females.
Yeah, but if you think he’s not gonna wanna look at women, you’re so wrong. He’s a GUY. Straight guys want to see women naked, always. We’re wired that way. Why do you think the porn industry is so successful?
The physical act is just part of it, and I would rather my 13 year old son not begin to explore this aspect of his humanity until he is emotionally capable of handling it.
Actually, we’re kinda in agreement here. When he’s ready to look at breasts he will, but there’s no reason to push him into doing so. I’m all for giving kids time and shelter to develop, which means allowing them to develop but not forcing them into anything. Plants need room to grow, so do people.
Frankly, I think a kid picks up a lot more from how his parents treat each other than from anything they say. If you and your husband treat each other with respect, and let him know that’s what you expect of him, you’re probably in pretty good shape.
If that makes me a prude, fine.
Teaching your kids that there’s something wrong with wanting to look at women’s breasts is prudish. Teaching him that he can pick and choose how and why he has sexual encounters isn’t.
I do not want my son to become a teenaged father or pick up some disease because he felt he was “ready.” Parental guidance still counts for something, and doing something just because “it feels good” is not a good enough reason. He is not old enough yet to understand all the consequences.
If you think he can get a disease or become a father by looking at a gal’s breasts, you’re the one who needs understanding. Believe me, just about every straight guy would be a father if he could become one by looking.
“She didn’t actually say she was going to show him anything, just if he wanted to see.”
Yeah, I wonder if there was a punch line.
ivylass, do not be alarmed, but I think I am in love with your son. 
Seriously though, he sounds like an absolutely fine young man with morals, something that most boys ages 10-25 today are sorely, sorely lacking. If he can keep it up, he’ll be just fine.
P.S. Speaking as a 19 year-old female, I can assure you that a shockingly great deal of 8th graders, high school girls, and college girls are sluts. It’s just a matter of seeking out those who aren’t, and it doesn’t sound to me like your son will have any problem with that.
The proper response was not “Yes” but “Could I fondle with them too?”
By countering with a bigger dare, he had nothing to lose.
I don’t disagree with your sentiments generally, and I see why you are proud of ivykid. But I think you want to be careful with
He was, after all, offered. It’s fine to decline, but supposing any such offers to be unworthy would IMHO be treating females as though they are never capable of initiating sexual encounters without lacking respect for themselves.
ivylass I think your son did just fine. That was a very classy response for one so young.
Just another reason to be glad that I have boys. I think God knew that I’d never be able to raise girls.
Ivyboy sounds like a good kid. You’ve raised him right.
However, this whole thing scares me. I have a thirteen-year-old cousin whom I adore - she’s a wonderful kid and I’ve helped raise her since she was born. The thought of her doing something like that…well, really upsets me. I would like to think that she wouldn’t - but with peer pressure the way it is now, I don’t know. She got in trouble a few weeks ago for going ‘walking’ in her neighborhood with a boy and telling her parents that she was bike-riding with a girlfriend. AFAIK, they did nothing more than actually walk and talk, but I want her to grow up respecting herself and not thinking that she has to be with boys just because her friends say so. Ugh. I think she and I need to have a little talk the next time I see her. Her mom had both her and her brother pretty young, and I don’t want to see that happen to her - her mom is great and very responsible now (she’s more my sister than my cousin), but it took awhile for her to get there.
Actually, when she and Ivyboy get a little older, can we get them together? I think he’d be a good influence on my little cousin.
Ava
I would respectfully suggest that perhaps the discussion here is so…hmm. What is the word? Highly supportive of ivykid because of his age, just as much as because he demurred?
Yanno, this is not so clearly cut along gender lines. If my daughter is of the age and emotional maturity to tell a boy, Would you like to kiss me, then so be it. If my SON if of the age and emotional maturity to tell a girl, Would you like to kiss me, so be it. The well thought out and trusting inclination to be intimate with somebody doesn’t make the offering party a slut. It takes maturity and a self-awareness and self-respect to do that, and understand what is involved.
My sexuality began when I was 15/16, and she was 15. Everything was a natural slow progression with a LOT of talking, deciding, chosing how we felt and what was right. I don’t feel I was too young ( Didn’t feel that then of course, but don’t now either ). For the things I was doing, I was mature enough to talk about them with her, and behave with care and love, and respect. And utter restraint when we knew we wanted to go no farther. And, with safe sex practices, long before the phrase was in vogue.
If both of my children see that the desire to ask, and the desire to invite are in fact the same desire, and that it has to not exist alone but as a shared energy, then I have raised them to be sexually responsible humans. If it becomes a separate thing, and not a part of their innate personality, then I would be saddened.
Understanding how to pleasure a lover is power. Abusing that power by being manipulative in an intimate setting is an atrocity. Using your body as a device of manipulation- ESPECIALLY at the ages discussed in the OP- is a tragedy, IMHO.
hawthorne, I never felt a lack of respect for the teenage girlfriends I had, and I only had two. ( that I was intimate with, anyway…) They knew themselves, knew what they wanted and understood in a teenage-ish kind of way, how to work within the parameters to share themselves with their partner.
Lest anyone thing I am blindly condoning sex at a particular age, I have friends who bitterly mutter about performing their "Wifely ", whether they are the least bit interested or not. They are over the age of 40. Age is only partially the issue here. To me the real issue is respect, and self awareness.
I agree with the sentiments expressed. Initiating sexual encounters does not mean a lack of respect for oneself. In many cases, it can mean an abundance of self respect. Respect to ask for what one wants.
But for a 13 year old, it may be a little too precocious.
Never heard a girl of any age say, “damn, I wish I had (insert sexual act here) when I was younger! I sure have been missing out!!” All I’ve ever heard is girls say is that they wish they had waited.
To try and stick with the OP, something is mildly screwy about a young teen girl offering to flash herself to a stranger - okay or anyone. No one can know what’s reallly going on in someone else’s head or what they’re ready for, so just make sure you talk to the youngins in your life and make sure they’ve got their head on straight.
Ivyboy certainly does, which is more than can be said for most kids his age.
I would bet that the girl was playing some head game and expected your son to reply yes in order to be able to use some supposedly “witty” answer (which wouldn’t have involved actually showing her tits)…
As long as ivykid is smart, stays in honors classes, and doesn’t hang around for too long after school, sluts will have a difficult time touching him.
Wow. That’s a lot of class for a 13 year-old. The vast majority (possibly including me at that age, but I dunno) would not have responded that way.
As for the slut thing, um… I dunno, I have problems with the assertion that any female who asserts herself sexually is a slut. Not to say that it’s APPROPRIATE for a 13 year-old girl to be acting in such a way, but I believe that it’s more complicated than that.
Not to mention the fact that sexually assertive women/girls are labeled as sluts while there is no such stigma or term for males with similar behavior - but that’s not the subject at hand, I suppose.
But y’all admit the way she was “asserting her sexuality” was very inappropriate. She was NOT “asserting her sexuality” constructively. She was doing so in a cheap, non-self-respecting manner. So happens there’s a word for that sort of personality. Would be nice if it were used indifferently to gender.
And grossly inappropriate sexual assertiveness in males is ALSO censured: you get called a pervert. Let’s imagine the tables were turned and it were the BOY requesting the girl to stop her game to show him the goods… the reactions would go from “oh, gross, how dumb can boys be” to kicking him in a delicate place immediately.
That the threshold for what is “grossly inappropriate” is set differently for the two genders by some people, that’s another story.
Of course he can’t get a disease from looking at a woman’s breasts. However, offering to look can lead to other things that he can’t handle right now. I am certainly not going to discourage his sexuality (I covered this in a previous thread when I caught him in the bathroom with an adult video catalog) but this particular situation has to do more with value. Looking at your girlfriend’s breasts after you’ve been together awhile is one thing. Looking at some random stranger who offered to show them to you is another.
I’m trying to teach my son to evaluate the character of the girls he encounters, to decide if this is somebody he wants to get to know better. The fact that he knows when a girl respects herself will go a long way when he’s deciding to settle down and get married and raise a family.
Is 13 to young to learn that? I don’t think so.