QUESTION: My 16-year-old daughter spends a huge amount of time at her best friend’s house and has become very close to the girl’s mother. I don’t really approve of this woman, who’s divorced and seems to have a constant stream of men in her life. I know that she’s been counselling my daughter about her new boyfriend (her first steady one), and this worries me because she allowed her own child to go on the Pill aged 15 and allows her boyfriends to stay over. I don’t want to bar my daughter from seeing her friend, but I do want to stop her being overly influenced. What should I do?
ANSWER: Let me start by saying you are wise not to want to bar your daughter from seeing her great friends.
Forbidding teenagers from doing things that are not injurious to their health is nearly always counter-productive, spurring them on to do the opposite of what you dictate.
Your daughter would almost certainly carry on seeing her pal and her mother, but would lie to you about it. The last thing you want in this situation are breaches of trust and broken communication.
It’s also true that many teens become cuckoos in their friends’ nests. It’s an age where children are over-sensitive to criticism and open to other ways of thinking. There’s nearly always some “cool” parent handing out tea and sympathy.
I became stroppy when I was 17, and, when my parents disapproved of a boy I was seeing, I decamped to a friend’s home for ten days. Her mom worked in London and seemed sophisticated and liberal.
Nevertheless, where she was really helpful was in calming me down and enabling me to see my mom’s point of view. So don’t jump to conclusions about what this other mother tells your daughter.
It seems to me you have three clear options to explore: you could express your concerns to the mother of your daughter’s friend; you could have a quiet word with your daughter; or you could hold fire and see what ensues.
After all, you’re worrying about your daughter’s future behaviour under the influence of this other mom, not what’s going on now.
The problem if you follow the first course of action is that I’m not sure what you can say to this woman without sounding judgmental or pompous. Being divorced and having boyfriends is hardly a hanging offence.
Indeed, a number of my friends have found it hard to find a steady partner following their divorces, which has had far more to do with the men’s reluctance to commit than my female friends’ flightiness.
Again, there are a number of decent and sensible parents I know who believe it is more realistic to give a 15 or 16-year-old girl advice about contraception than to imagine they can stop them sleeping with their boyfriends.
Even in the mid-Eighties, a third of my class at a private all-girls school lost their virginity around that age, though almost none of them told their parents.
You clearly feel this other mother is encouraging her daughter to be promiscuous, while she may believe that, since it’s incredibly hard to police intimacy between teenagers, parental care should focus on preventing pregnancy.
So, if you do decide to talk to this woman, I would be as non- incendiary as possible: tell her you are grateful she’s so hospitable to your daughter, outline your concerns that your child is young and vulnerable, and say you’d appreciate her support in urging caution in this new relationship.
Or you could follow option two and talk to your daughter directly. The problem with this is that hormonal teenage girls (who are invariably more trouble than boys) tend to tell their moms that they’re impossibly square and don’t understand.
My own mother was cunning and effective in impressing her own romanticism, as well as scruples, upon her three girls by telling us that sex was such a “wonderful and precious” thing that virginity shouldn’t be cast away on inept, teenage swain.
I sense the wisest course is to wait and see how your daughter progresses in this fledgling relationship. After all, it may flounder in seconds and barely get past first base - which is what happens with most of the teenage girls I know.
The truth is that this woman may have some influence on your daughter, but it’s as experimental for her as trying on a maxi followed by a mini.
When you’re 16, you’re always looking for different templates to consider. But you and your husband have moulded and raised your daughter and you will inevitably be her strongest influence.
Almost all of us find that whatever the trials of our teen tearaway stage, we revert to much of our parental value system. Just wait and see. - Daily Mail