Young Love

My 10 year old boy has announced that he "kinda likes a girl in a mommy-and-daddy way." Cue cinematic scream here. My little boy! It's starting. Can the horrors of adolescence be far behind? He already eats his own body weight in snacks each day, and he's the same height as his teacher, plus he's all moody and stuff like Mr. Spock in pon farr. The day my mother promised me ("someday you'll have a child just like you!") won't really come until the five-year-old girl comes of age - but it just got a lot closer.

So what does one ask one's 10 year old son about the object of his affections? I started with her name. Then is she nice? Is she in the same classes with you? (Oh, who am I trying to fool, that came out more like is she smarter than you, or dumber, or about the same?) Does she know you like her? And, quite unbidden, from the depths, is she pretty? (The boy's answer to this last was surprising. "Not yet, but she will be in middle school," he told me. I don't know how I feel about that as a reply, but I do admire his originality.)

I can see in retrospect where my mother's interests were when I recall her reaction to my many childhood crushes. I don't remember what she asked me about my crushes, but she always made three points:

1. You will have a lot of crushes before you fall in love with the man you marry.

2. You cannot get married until you finish college.

3. You better not get pregnant until you can afford to take care of a baby because I am not planning to raise your children.

If pressed, Mom would offer up some additional thoughts and moral considerations to accompany these points. But the prime directive was clear: my job was to stay focused on my education and not get pregnant. When I reached puberty, she added more emphasis on a fourth point. "If you do get in trouble, we are going to yell at you and get mad, but we will always love you and help you. You can tell me anything. I can't promise I'll like it, but talk to me and I will try to help."

You know, I wish now that I'd heard a little bit more about chastity and honesty in relationships when I was growing up. But a lot of what my mother did was spot-on. She was honest. She clearly and frequently communicated her expectations. She drew a distinction between her love for me and her approval of my choices. That was important, since my parents were not "free-to-be, you-and-me" kinds of parents. They tolerated a fair amount of verbal dissent, but they held us to a pretty high standard of conduct. Except in a couple of social justice arenas and my father's military service, the 1960s totally passed them by. There were no co-ed sleep-overs. There were no boys allowed in my room. If my boyfriends came to call, they had to pass parental inspection and were usually supervised by my younger siblings. I knew in advance what their opinion would be when it came to teh hanky-panky. But I also knew that their love would be at least as strong as their disapproval and that I could turn to them. (I wish I had figured that out a lot earlier about God, actually, but that's a topic for another time. Though my parents had a hard time talking about His love, they were mercifully good at modeling it for me.)

The oldest is not ready to declare his feelings to his crush. That is fine with me. Dating and mating are still a ways, off for now. Still, the boy has given fair warning that I need to have something better to say than is she pretty? the next time. I don't know how much longer I have before he stops overtly seeking my approval, so I want to make use of the time I have.

My next conundrum: how do you raise kids to be chaste when you, uh, totally weren't?