Boys

We let our 14 year old daughter have boys sleep over. Yes. I know that this is not normal and that in the past my insistence on not being normal has certainly been a bad choice. I may be completely wrong in all my ideas leading up to this allowance, it may be yet another example of the pendulum swinging way too far in one direction and yet, this is where my husband and I stand.
This morning, when I told my 78 year old father (who is staying with us right now) that there were several kids in my daughters room (2 boys, 2 girls) so beware, he replied, "You mean those boys spent the night? My God. Disgusting!" Suffice it to say, my father did not let me have boyfriends or boy-friends sleep over. I would have loved to, I had a few boy-friends who were as good or better girl-friends than any girl had been. It would have been wonderful to have them sleep over so our giggling could have been extended into the wee hours of the morning (the only reason for a sleep over I think). And if we had ended up smooching he would have been a safe boy to experiment with instead of some "cute" asshole I actually was physically attracted to.

I trust my daughter. I do not trust that she will never nor has ever lied to me. No, I trust she will and know she has. I trust her to talk to me about the things that matter. I trust that she trusts me and her father, to love her first and to judge and get angry second. I trust that she is not me, that she is a very different human being than I was and am. I trust her judgement to the degree that a 14 year old has judgement at all. I see that her judgement is about on par with mine at 19 or 20. I believe that she was born with a greater, more established sense of right and wrong and her position on such things, than I was.

My daughter has been asking me and my husband the most probing questions since she was 3. My favorite example of her willingness to reach out for information was at the age of 6 when she said, "If you and dad had to have sex to have Edan [her little brother] then where was I when you did it?" my response, totally caught off guard was something like, "Uhhh, well, um" to which she gracefully replied, "I am sorry if I asked an embarrassing question... I know! I was at a sleep over!"

My inability to smoothly answer this question set my husband and me to further discussion of our feelings about honesty with our kids. We both grew up in a time when drugs and sex were done and discussed openly and without any censorship nor real understanding of the effects of both on a child's self-concept. We agreed that we would continue to be utterly truthful about the mechanics, and even the element of love, involved in sex. But we decided that we would purposely censor ourselves when it came to our own histories with both sex and drugs.

And we did so successfully for a long time. No bragging stories was she to hear about our drunk driving, our brushes with the cops, our bad trips on acid and mushrooms, our promiscuity or our exes. She heard nothing of the arrests, the time in juvy, the breaking and entering the knives confiscated, the quitting high school, the coming to school drunk and high and doing cocaine in the bathroom stalls in 10Th grade. Unlike me, she didn't have a paraphernalia box to play in, she didn't know what a "numby" was (nor given herself one from the inside of an old cedar coke box), she didn't know what razors, dollar bills and short straws were really used for. Unlike her dad, she couldn't eye an eighth, she didn't know how to sex a pot plant, she didn't know the history of free-base. None of this was discussed in front of her.

Then she turned 13. And suddenly she started asking. "How old were you when you first had sex?", "Have you ever smoked pot?", "What about cocaine?". And we didn't want to lie and we desperately didn't want to tell her the truth. It was horribly complicated. I knew the power of a child's desire to be like and emulate her parent's exploits. I sure as hell made a conscious decision to be on par with my parents and their wild and crazy yet somehow not a problem now pasts.

So we dished out the truth in dribs and drabs. We revealed as little as we felt we could honestly. We did not condone nor relish any of our past adventures. We were full of regret. We warned and admonished her against repeating our mistakes. And all the while she herself was continuing to explore her own limits with sexuality, alcohol, drugs. First just by being near kids who might be doing a little of that stuff, by drinking half a glass of someones wine at Christmas dinner, by smoking a cigarette, by playing truth or dare at her birthday party. And she was honest about it all. My momma-sixth-sense knew it and asked or she felt guilty or she just casually mentioned it. And every time we had a good talk about it, about the internal and external pressures she felt, about her desire to be mature, grown-up, a leader, the first one to do cool things.

And while these things were occurring, while she was going along in the hell that is teenage hormonal insanity (because they are insane with their level of hormones washing over those poor brains) she was having friends over, making new friends, leaving friends, figuring out the safety of certain friends and often, having big group sleep-overs that included boys. Boys she had known since infancy, boys who she had known pre-puberty and post. Boys whom we liked, could talk with, who were respectful, funny, bright and loving. My husband and I saw that things were shifting, that these boys were becoming more overtly sexual and we remember what it was like at their age, we are not at all naive. But, we decided to continue to allow it.

There are some rules. One being that boys have to sleep on the floor, the second being that the boys have to pass the Nick test. My husband, not a small man and not easily intimidated by a mountain lion let alone an eesy-beensy boy, shakes hands, looks them in the eyes and says, "No messing around with my daughter or anyone else here. You got that? Be respectful, alright?" And he just knows. He has asked a boy to leave one night, just real casual. A boy who has slept over before but he could feel a vibe that night. And our daughter confirmed he was being playfully but possibly too pushy with her new friend.

I have had many an eyebrow raised at our allowance of this co-ed sleepover activity. I am not attached to it as a permanent standard but for now, as long as we feel good about our daughter, her friends and the flow of communication, it shall remain. I'll let you know how it works out.