Parenting the Dating Youths

[Phoebe]

As my kids age the parenting challenge morphs into awful new forms. I knew that I was not going to like this particular one, and I was right! In short - and no offense to the people here who are mostly guys and of a very pleasant and top quality variety - Men are awful, particularly as teenagers. None of my children should date teenage boys, pretty much ever. I have been spared most of this sort of thing, but now I have two kids who may or may not be dating teenage boys. That is two too many for me. These boys are not worthy. When I say these boys I mean all of them. All the boys of teenage. Not one is okay for my babies. None should touch my babies. Trust does not exist in this zone. They disgust me as well.

I have an older child with a boyfriend. Although she can date him if she wants and she has to live her own life, I find myself deeply hostile towards this person. Why? So many reasons. It can be summed up as: he is not worthy and he is not engaging in the serious acts of a serious person who wishes to form a lifelong union. If he's not going to do those things, the only thing he can do is damage, even if it's inadvertent damage. What does my child have to gain from this relationship? Small amounts of pleasure purchased at a very high price. What does she have to lose from it? Massive risks of all kinds, from all sides.
Then I look at this "man" - and by the way, I look even harder at his taller, bad-boy friend who seems to be trying to play a destructive spoiler role in this scenario - and ask what on earth he has to recommend him that would make up for this inherent imbalance?
Answer: almost nothing. He does nothing for her. He contributes nothing of value or positivity. He paints. I don't care whether he paints well or not; he doesn't even paint as well as she does. What good does it do her to have a painter around who's not even as good a painter as she is? And he's not even very pleasant; He's a whiner. I can see why she might find him cute but I think he's not cute at all. He looks afraid. I do not wish him to father my grandchildren, assuming I wished anyone too
at all. What do we do with these feelings, other than choke them down in silence?

Here's what my mother did: she would ask skeptical questions timed with a surgeon's precision to cast doubt upon the relationship. This would usually cause me to become disillusioned with the man over time and get rid of him. In this way she successfully weeded out many suitors. I am grateful because many bad ones were dodged in this manner.

But I hope we're not to the point of having to worry about marriage yet, and I don't really want to do that. I feel like it's not my business to meddle. But my God, can't we do better than this?

Then I have another child and I'll just put this flatly: there won't be anyone good enough for her. Period. I don't know what we're supposed to do about that. Mike has a couple kids that would qualify and I'm not even joking about this. We may need to arrange something. I feel like he would have raised good boys and I don't trust almost any of the rest.

It's all very distasteful. The child who basically won't be allowed to date because I can't accept that is either not dating someone who is gay but pretends to be her boyfriend, or she has been dating someone for 2 years without my knowledge and they are pretending he is gay.

Tldr version: unless I am allowed to arrange the marriages of my children, I will be that horrible mother who pretends to be blandly amiable but secretly loathes all the people her children are dating.

TL:Dr tldr version: control freak dislikes children dating; forces self to silently tolerate it, while seething with disgust.

[Tahlvin]

Dating, and breaking up, are essentially things for children to develop good relationship skills. Experiencing and being able to handle the emotional roller coaster involved is important. Learning to establish boundaries, determine what are acceptable behaviors in relationships, public and private, are critical to having healthy, happy marriages in the future. As a parent, you cannot make those decisions for your children, but you can help guide them. Much of the parenting work you've put in to this point will play a part in it, and it sounds like you're mother's approach to your dating had an impact on you, so a similar, subtle approach may work here. And you should certainly speak up if you feel your child is truly in physical or psychological danger (physical or emotional abuse, drug abuse, etc.) because of a relationship. But you're reaching the point in the parenting relationship where you have to give up some of the control and hope you've done things right so that they make the right decisions.

It sucks, but that's parenting, and hopefully the joys outweigh the suck.

[Phoebe]

Lol give up control, haha yes, what you say has the glow of Truth and Reason all around! Yet I have two settings: 100 Control and Zero (while seething with terrified anxiety). Looking to work up maybe 18% level control? 11%?

Anyway, GOOD news:
I decided the boy who may or may not be dating the high school aged child is blessed and good because I happened to pick up MY phone where my child had been texting her friend large group chat, and talking about how nervous she was to perform her recital today, and the "boy in question" quickly posted up "How many times do I have to tell you how awesome you are, good at everything you do?!"
And just like that, he became an acceptable son in law. Good.

[bralbovsky]

Full disclosure:
One child is married, going on seven years, has daughter. Relationship decent. He learned boundaries, sticking up for himself, wins some, loses some. Their primary source of friction is her family.
Two daughters have suitors, serious, decent guys. Took a long time. Both cycled through the usual trash. One spent a long time with an ok guy before she decided she wanted more. If they end up with these guys life will be pretty close to swell.
I wish I could say this was somehow directly my fault.
They are better at relationships than I am.
They knew I was willing to commit murder on their behalf.
Let's not talk about the baseball bat.
One of my best moments was when I heard by the way that the older one had told someone, "They'll never find your remains."

I guess I made it clear that they needed to find someone who loved them as much as I do. They're 30 and 26.

[Phoebe]

Thank you for indicating my feelings are not completely without hinge to the human norm. I like my kids and wish them to be protected, even though I know that one must let them run around freely prone to being injured by others. But mostly I dislike and mistrust so many people, particularly boys of the dating kind. It's hard to overcome the well-entrenched sense that many of them are dangerous, literally, and others either do not have the best interests of others at heart, or mean to but do not know how to achieve their intentions in action.

[Phoebe]

I have been spending a lot more time lately with the high school potential suitor, and have decided he is worthy. He has a sardonic wit and is nevertheless consistently supportive of the kid's best interests. I can't discuss all the details but he lately did something to encourage her to make a choice at school that was best for her academic interests, where her other friends were pressuring her the other direction. He gets all the stars. He may not be heterosexual but I can tell you both my husband and I believe his actions are those of a BF even if it is a only a platonic romance. Now that it is break from school time, he is attempting to befriend her older sister and brother.

Now we come to the problem: I have had a headache for 3 hours over since I awoke, because a gentleman caller is visiting the oldest child today, even though he is not her boyfriend (there is a different actual boyfriend and this guy just happens to hate him, wonder why?). We will not be seeing the boyfriend during this break from school, but this non-boyfriend has immediately found a plausible yet flimsy excuse to travel a distance to our town and home. And in a manner that is completely unprecedented and completely out of character - I cannot emphasize enough how completely out of character this is - the child involved has decided our house needs to look neater and cleaner before he arrives. She might as well have sent down a lightning bolt from the heavens as said something like this, in terms of our shock level. She also talks about this dude all the time even though, as noted above, he's not her boyfriend. Thus my headache.

[Mando]

Having a mandatory family outing with no notice to the boy may work once.
We had a suspect boyfriend type who did not meet our approval. They were only allowed to sit with each other at church...beside us.
He had too strong of a self-preservation instinct to actually come to our home.

Yes, she dislike this a lot...and eventually thanked us profusely.

[Phoebe]

I am pleased because the boy connected to the middle child is such a delightful child and polite to all; meanwhile, the boys attached to the oldest child have either dropped out of college or are staying away until February because of covid. I am not sorry. Good time to break up. Is this harsh? It's not easy to push for it directly, but he's such a toad and he has no respect or appreciation for the fact that he dates a goddess. He should be crying and trembling on the floor. Disgusting.

[Kyle]

Its not your job to like your child's partner. Its your job to respect their decisions, unless their partner is physically or emotionally abusive. While it would be great to like every partner my children date, all I really want is for them to find someone who respects them and makes them happy- even if they don't make me happy.

[Phoebe]

Ok - this guy has no respect. I don't think disrespect is the same thing as emotional abuse or he would find himself without an elbow or knee right now. But I agree with you, if she's making her own decision it has to be respected in turn by us, and thus the paradox of respecting the respect of the disrespecting arises.

[bralbovsky]

One might ask...not "how do you feel about this person?" but "How does this person make you feel about yourself?"
Said child is absolutely entitled to her own feelings.
We approach your protective jurisdiction when her self image or self concept are threatened. You accept and love her no matter who she decides to be, and the question is your way of keeping track of who that is at the moment. It might make her look at whether this is what she wants or how she wants to feel.

[Phoebe]

Reflections on this subject from a year plus later are quite interesting. One child has a tame and pleasant stable relationship that causes no concerns; another child has no such relationships but also does not appear to want any, which is great in my book; both of these kids also have lots of healthy friendships which is definitely a positive interaction with the romantic friendship as well; and another child is...well, I don't even know how to explain it. I disagree with and reject every possible aspect of the whole dating life we are witnessing, in the strongest possible way. Yet you can't control what other people do and they're going to go on making their own dumb choices. If I felt like I could have any respect for any of the people that are appearing as potential dating partners, then I would be able to respect my child's independent choices and deal with the fact that I don't like this situation. It's not my life. The problem is not only that I have less than zero respect for any of these f****** bozos, it has become clear to me that the kid is completely incapable of picking a decent one, and now you're just hoping that you never have to actually personally deal with one of them because somebody's going to end up in jail, and somebody's probably going to be me.

In a nutshell, it's exactly where we left it before:
"Not one is okay for my babies. None should touch my babies. Trust does not exist in this zone. They disgust me as well."
I swear to you if there was even a scrap of promise or decency or functionality or ethics or talent about any of these people I would be willing to embrace it. There is not. Unfortunately the subject is centrally important in the life of the dating person and as a result it creates intolerably bad situations and I am personally miserable because of it. Normally in these situations you recite to yourself pacifying ethical mantras about what situations you can control, the fact that you can't control other people's choices and should not try to anyway, the fact that you shouldn't let other people have the power to cause your unhappiness etc etc. But it's different with your kids. It's impossible not to be protective of their well-being, and bottom line is the dating is just not okay for women in many situations. It's a f***** up world and these guys are f***** up assholes.

If anyone has ever dealt with or gets to the point of dealing with their kid dating a person or persons they loathe, not for personal preference reasons but because the person is really not at all deserving of dating their kid (treats them poorly, generally a s***** person, encourages the kid to engage in all kinds of bad habits and problems left and right), let me know what you do about it. Like how do you manage this both with yourself and the kid? The only thing I can say is that nobody's going to be getting pregnant, for sure. I would lose my mind if I had to be joined to some of these nitwits in that serious of a manner. Beyond that problem, I just don't even know how to deal with it. I literally tried to fix her up with improved versions, to no avail. Anyone nice and polite and pleasant, smart and honest and reliable, committed to their work, etc is literally mocked for being those things. Is this the method of rebellion designed to hurt me? I see how wrong it is to make anything in a situation like this about me but oh my god it's very painful. Oftentimes what bubbles up to the surface seems very clearly a case of "I will hurt you by hurting myself in this way". My insistence that other people insist on being treated with basic respect and decency is labeled "1950s Mormonism".

[Kyle]

So having dealt with this with multiple children, I always and constantly remind myself that it doesn't matter if I like the person they're dating. It's important that they like them. That's first and foremost. And if they like them-- and it's not an abusive relationship (emotionally or physically)-- then I try to keep most of my thoughts to myself. I remember that my wife's parents hated me: after we were engaged they tried to set her up on a date with a "proper boy."

However, if we see things that are abusive or borderline abusive, then we will delicately find a way of talking to the child about that. Often this is when the person they're dating doesn't respect them or acts disrespectfully to them. Also, if we notice that the child has become unhappy all the time since they began dating this person, then we'll approach them about that too.

We have pretty open and frank communications with our kids about everything in the world. So along with all of this, we often have our kids approach us for advice. And when that happens, we're 100% honest with them.

But in the vast majority of cases, I don't say much if I don't like who they're dating. Again, it doesn't matter if I like them if they're treating my child with respect and my child likes being with them.

[Phoebe]

I think I can say with confidence that your parenting methods are better than mine, and I don't mean that to be self-disparaging because I know that my methods are coming from a pure place of desire for the good of the child. But my methods don't work. I need to try to say less about it but also to broach the borderline abusive situation in a different way than I have been. I also prize the frankness and honesty and I think you can't go wrong with that, but I come off as judgy even when I'm not trying to be judgy and sometimes I'm definitely trying to be judgy. Teenagers and judgy is not a good mix.

[Phoebe]

I forgot to update this. A miracle occurred. The child arrived at the house with a boyfriend who was extremely polite in a manner that suggested training, and he was also extremely good looking. I can discern no other possible reason to recommend him as a boyfriend, which is not great, but polite and functional is an extremely impressive start compared to where we've been.

[Phoebe]

Polite boyfriend turns out to be a plumber. I don't want to jinx it but having a plumber in the family is of the greatest things that could happen. Electrician would be pretty good as well. I don't know by what miracle a polite plumber showed up but I don't want to screw it up by saying anything.

[Kyle]

Yeah- I've got a kid who's an appliance repair person. So amazing. I told my youngest he needs to be a car mechanic. If I can get a car mechanic and an HVAC person- I'm set!

[Phoebe]

Appliance repair would be amazing. My husband handles the mechanic and computer guy stuff and he and I together can do moderate electrician, like figuring out switches and such, but as soon as we get to the point of fear that we will electrocute ourselves or need to touch the big board we need an expert. So that's what I'm hoping for someday.

Alternatively my younger kids seem interested in making money through investment in a way that the oldest does not, so far, so let's see if they're any good at it and then we can just hire whoever. Start a mutual fund, my child.

[Phoebe]

A near miracle has occurred: I like the (plumber) boyfriend. He seems okay. This is a revelatory experience. Suddenly it seems vaguely normal to have him hanging around the kitchen. He is a pleasant individual!

Meanwhile my 11 year old now informs me he has had a "girlfriend" for the last year. ? ??? ? The heck? He's also sitting here destroying something in his video game, and marking such occasions by loudly exclaiming "YASSS QUEEN KEEP THAT SLAY KEEP THAT SLAY". So I don't really know what's going on in this life anymore. Just sit me down for a nap from time to time.

[Phoebe]

I am amazed by the distance traveled looking back to the beginning of this thread and then a year and a half later. I did not think myself capable of any warm reception of a boyfriend into this life, evarrrrrr! Yet some crucial things happen that caused me to favor the current boyfriend, and once I decided I liked him the whole scale shifted towards the opposite. It is amazing how you can envision having this person become part of your family or treating him like one of your kids. The real kicker, however, is that my dog absolutely loves him. And my dog really doesn't love almost anybody but me. So it's impressive.

Meanwhile the youngest really does have a girlfriend. He has gone on two dates with her in the last 2 weeks. How is this even humanly possible, you wonder? They arranged to go to the fundraising night at the same time, unbeknownst to us, the parents, who dutifully attended the fundraising dinner and then lo and behold they got to sit together. They don't go to the same school so this takes a certain amount of doing on their part. Same thing happened when they both attended a musical event their friends were in. So they actually plot together to attend events and then they sit together like it's a little date. It's troubling but thank God extremely innocent at this age so hopefully nothing to worry about, since I don't think the kid is capable of getting anywhere too far outside of the house without our assistance!

Another kid is totally hostile to dating and that is totally fine with me. The friends were joking about it because it is a known thing now, the basic hostility. I can relate; at that age I was pretty hostile too.