If your teens are allowed to date, what kind of rules are in place?

[Trilliums]

We have a peculiar situation and I don't really want to go into the details as it gets way too personal too fast.

 

Please share with me, rules/expectations from families with teens who are allowed to date and who actually want to date. Especially interested for a 16 yo girl who has had a lot of freedom and responsibility but a terribly rough few years, generally honest and is trusting of other teens (not always adults though).

 

Can they meet boys at the mall? Invite them over? Go over to the boy's house? Go for walks alone? Go somewhere with them after school?

??

 

From a mom of teen boys who aren't interested in dating who has found herself in a totally new situation!

[busymama7]

My teens have to go out in groups of 4 or more(2 couples). They also are not steady but rather going with different teens each time(they do repeat)

 

I would be ok with going to their house and/or coming to ours as long as parents are home and they are in the main part of the house with the family (no bedrooms). Walks to/from home would be ok too. Mall is iffy but I would probably be ok with it if I generally trusted the teen.

 

My biggest concern would be in exclusivity. But from the other thread we had I realized that the LDS culture of dating people to get to know them and not to pair of as boyfriend and girlfriend is unique so this might not apply.

 

Good luck figuring it out for your family.

[KungFuPanda]

We have a peculiar situation and I don't really want to go into the details as it gets way too personal too fast.

Please share with me, rules/expectations from families with teens who are allowed to date and who actually want to date. Especially interested for a 16 yo girl who has had a lot of freedom and responsibility but a terribly rough few years, generally honest and is trusting of other teens (not always adults though).

Can they meet boys at the mall? Invite them over? Go over to the boy's house? Go for walks alone? Go somewhere with them after school?

??

From a mom of teen boys who aren't interested in dating who has found herself in a totally new situation!

I have a 17-year-old daughter. She has a boyfriend. They can hang out at his house (he has a SAHM and a 5-year-old brother who won't leave them alone.). They can hang out here ( I'm home and my 14-year-old son won't leave them alone.) they can walk to and from school together (his dad teaches at the school.) They haven't actually ASKED to go out alone. They go out with their group of choir or theatre friends to the movies or bowling. They went to the mall once with us and to the drive-in with us. I LIKE this boyfriend. He's a year younger and his parents seem as vigilant as we are. It'll be a little sad to see him go, but I'm sure he's not The One. I shudder to think who she'll meet next year in college with no oversight.

 

If they did ask to go out alone, I'd ask for a specific itinerary and would probably let them go. They both only have learner's permits, so they'd need a parent to drop off or pick up. As both sets of parents are fans of the surprise pop-in, I think they'd mostly behave. I do expect some PG kissing and that doesn't bother me.

[AK_Mom4]

General rules that we have had for both sons and daughters:

 

No going out on dates without a phone to call home. If yours is dead, borrow mine or a sibling's. Safety first!

No going out on dates without cash in your wallet/purse. Even if your date is paying.

Phone home if your plans change. Texting doesn't count as calling home unless you get a response from a parent.

 

And... You will never ever ever get in trouble for calling home for a ride for any reason. Ever. That's a promise.

 

We make our kids wait until at least 16 to start 1-1 dating, so for the most part they were used to hanging with friends and the general rules still applied. We encourage them to hang out at our house with the boyfriend/girlfriend because there's is always someone here. To that end, we keep an open kitchen and lots of movies/video games/high speed Internet.

[bethben]

I read an article about the failure of "courting" and how this particular blogger's grandmother dated when she was a teen.  Her grandmother was allowed to date, but could not date the same person twice in a row.  At that time, it seemed to keep dating as a fun thing - not serious and not exclusive.  I don't have to think about that quite yet though.

 

[Guest]

I have a 17-year-old daughter. She has a boyfriend. They can hang out at his house (he has a SAHM and a 5-year-old brother who won't leave them alone.). They can hang out here ( I'm home and my 14-year-old son won't leave them alone.) they can walk to and from school together (his dad teaches at the school.) They haven't actually ASKED to go out alone. They go out with their group of choir or theatre friends to the movies or bowling. They went to the mall once with us and to the drive-in with us. I LIKE this boyfriend. He's a year younger and his parents seem as vigilant as we are. It'll be a little sad to see him go, but I'm sure he's not The One. I shudder to think who she'll meet next year in college with no oversight.

 

If they did ask to go out alone, I'd ask for a specific itinerary and would probably let them go. They both only have learner's permits, so they'd need a parent to drop off or pick up. As both sets of parents are fans of the surprise pop-in, I think they'd mostly behave. I do expect some PG kissing and that doesn't bother me.

This is pretty much the same as I allow for my 17yo dd. She and her boyfriend do go to the mall or a restaurant alone, though. I started to permit this shortly before she was 17. Her boyfriend is 18, drives and lives independently at college. She is not allowed to go to his condo, although the reality of course is that they could be anywhere when they are supposed to be at The Cheesecake Factory, KWIM? But my feeling is, we're not far from her also being independently at college, so it seems better to be putting some slack in the reins now.

 

P.S. Specific freedoms will always be case-by-case in my household. There is no such thing as arbitrary ages, as in, you can go here when you turn 16, you can do this when you turn 17, and so forth. The only age-based rules we follow are law mandates.

[Trilliums]

I appreciate the different perspectives. DH and I have spent some time deciding on baseline rules do we can be consistent. This is a whole new world for us.

[Jenny in Florida]

No hard and fast rules regarding dating here. We did ask both kids, when they were living at home, to let us know when to expect them back and that they call or text (and verify that we received it by waiting for a reply) if plans changed. 

 

Both also know that one of us will go pick them up any time, any place if the teen ever feels it is necessary. We set up "code words" that could be dropped into normal conversation so that either one could call home and use that word to ask for a ride home or other intervention without having to say it out loud in the middle of company. 

 

None of that was specifically about dating, though, just stuff we put in place when they started going out without us.

 

Thus far, both of ours have shown amazing good sense regarding this sort of thing and have been really good about keeping us in the loop when they do decide to go out with someone. My daughter even asked my opinion before agreeing to go out with one guy, and my son asked for advice about planning his first date a few months ago. Neither has started any kind of official, one-on-one dating until at least 16, even though we didn't make a rule about that, either.

[Donna]

My boys date. They were not allowed to go on a "date" until 16yo though I did allow them to go to their friends' home as long as I had met the parents and they were home, have a friend to our home, or go to a movie with a large group prior (14-15yo). My oldest didn't really date much until the past year and now he is off to college so he is on his own.

 

My rules (for when they are in our house) include a curfew (or a phone call if going past and a reason why), always answer the phone if I call you and call me with any change of plans, and dating one night a weekend only. We have had numerous conversations about calling home for a ride without risk of getting in trouble if they are ever in a situation where they need one…has not happened yet.

 

I do not tell them who they can date and both my boys have had longer term "girlfriends" from time to time. Neither has "dated" a girl I didn't like or would not have approved of it they asked.

[bobbeym]

My 16 year old son is allowed to go to the girl's house only if we know the parents and know the parents will be home the entire time and will provide proper supervision.   Dates must be in a group of 4+ or chaperoned by a parent or other known, responsible adult.  He must call home and speak to a parent if plans change, and has to be inside the house by midnight unless he's with another adult and prior approval is given to be out later than that.

[DawnM]

I didn't know there was an LDS culture of dating.

 

However, this is what i tell my boys.  They haven't expressed an interest in dating, but I tell them to get to know a girl in a group setting first and even when they want to be more exclusive, to go out in groups first.

 

I have never thought the exclusivity of one on one too soon was a good idea.  

 

I was 27 when I met DH.  We were part of a group of friends and spent 1.5 years "not" dating before dating.  When we started actually dating, we got engaged very fast because we knew by that point.

 

Dawn

 

 

My teens have to go out in groups of 4 or more(2 couples). They also are not steady but rather going with different teens each time(they do repeat)

I would be ok with going to their house and/or coming to ours as long as parents are home and they are in the main part of the house with the family (no bedrooms). Walks to/from home would be ok too. Mall is iffy but I would probably be ok with it if I generally trusted the teen.

My biggest concern would be in exclusivity. But from the other thread we had I realized that the LDS culture of dating people to get to know them and not to pair of as boyfriend and girlfriend is unique so this might not apply.

Good luck figuring it out for your family.

 

[DawnM]

I don't really get this.  

 

But please know that I hated dating.  The one on one with a guy you didn't know very well made no sense to me.  It was awkward and unnatural (IMO).  

 

I much preferred getting to know a guy in a larger social group, church, work setting, grad school, etc....

 

Dawn

 

 

I read an article about the failure of "courting" and how this particular blogger's grandmother dated when she was a teen.  Her grandmother was allowed to date, but could not date the same person twice in a row.  At that time, it seemed to keep dating as a fun thing - not serious and not exclusive.  I don't have to think about that quite yet though.

 

[EmilyGF]

So, I don't have teens, but was allowed to date as a teen. FWIW, my best friend in 9th and 10th grades was a boy, so rules like "no one-on-one time in a car with a boy" would have completely devastated my friendship! 

 

My parents required me to call if I would be later than I had told them to expect. They did everything they could to have us hang out with them at our own house. They told me repeatedly that the way the boy treated my somewhat annoying 9-year-old brother would show me a lot about him. What is funny is that I never really hung out with the families of the boys I went out with, except for one - I met him because I was babysitting his younger siblings a lot and my mom was friends with his mom.

 

My parents had very few rules for me as a teen but always cultivated a close relationship based on mutual honesty. I know a lot about their own failings because they were completely honest with me, and I felt the need to be just as honest in return. I would feel honored and blessed to have the same sort of relationship with my teens (though I wasn't perfect, nor were they).

[Lady Florida.]

Ds (17 next week) has a girlfriend, and the situation is very much like what Panda and Quill posted. They hang out either at our house or hers. They're allowed in the bedroom for some privacy, but the door must stay wide open at all times. They've gone to movies with just the two of them, but since neither has a license yet, they get dropped off and picked up. Usually they go out with groups of friends.