Letting Go

[dbc915]

My daughter will reach age 16 next month, the age we set years ago as when she could begin dating. She has announced her plans to date a boy in our church. This guy is the most immature, disrespectful boy in the youth in our church. In fact, he is a year younger than my daughter. I suspect she began having feelings for this boy several months ago when she suddenly wanted to be more involved with the youth group at church. Normally, this would be a good thing. But the kids in our youth group are very worldly and the negative influence on my daughter has been obvious. We have always sought to shelter our daughter by having her in private, Christian school and always emphasized that Christ calls us to a higher standard. Now, her friends, the people she hangs out with, are kids with very few standards.



I know the answer is that it is time to begin letting go of my daughter. I can't do this without being less involved. My wife sees being less involved as giving up and not wanting to be a father. But I believe, in letting go, there must be some distance. Otherwise, I will smother her. And like this time, I am not always going to be pleased with her decisions. But she has to make them, not me. Not at 16 years old.

After many days of tension between my daughter and I, Sunday was a day of communication. I told her calmly how I feel and she discussed her feelings. I tried to explain to her that I am not trying to control her but she will always be my little girl. When I see her heading into trouble, it wrenches my heart out to stand back and not try to protect her. I know all the right answers. That eventually we must let go and trust in the Lord. That this is just a small taste of how the Lord felt when he let go of His Son. That this is how the Lord feels when He watches His children make bad choices of their own free will. But it still is painful. At least, now I know she knows I love her.


My daughter now says she is just going to be friends with this boy and see if something more develops. She wants to go out on dates with him because he is fun to be around. I have warned her that would be very dangerous. She is already making comments that lead to a trap so many people fall into -- thinking they can make the other person better. She says the boy wants to change but no one is giving him a second chance. I spoke to our pastor over the weekend about the situation and he gave me further warnings about the boy. He has many "second chances". I tell my daughter that if she is patient and waits, God has the perfect person picked out for her to date. God would never say, "This is the best I can do for you. You see if you can fix them up." I am still so surprise that my daughter would even be attracted to him. She has always been so mature and never liked to be around immature acting people.

I ask for your prayers that Christ will guide me in letting go.

 

[Tangnefedd]

I have three daughters all adults now. I know from experience that if you disapprove of their choice of friends that is the quickest way to encourage them to seek out their company. Your daughter is 16 and old enough to make her own decisions about friends. She is also old enough to have to live by the consequences of those decisions! We can't live our children's lives for them as much as we might want to. We can't protect them from all harm. Your child has been sheltered up to now from influences you didn't like, but now she is exposed to them they are bound to look attractive. Many girls love 'bad boys' unfortunately, they seem to have an attraction, goodness know why.

The only advice I can give you based on experience, is to step back from the situation and be there for your daughter, without saying "I told you so", if she gets her fingers burnt. We all have to learn by our own mistakes and those lessons can be very tough indeed!

 

[JillLars]

Your daughter is young, and she will need to learn these things on her own. Unfortunately there are some heartaches a parent cannot (and should not) protect their children from. It sounds as if she has made a mature decisions to be friends with the boy first. While he may have had many "second chances" he deserves more, we all do, Jesus always gives us a chance, and we should show that same compassion to others. You can tell her about the trap of trying to fix people in relationships, but she may not believe you until she experiences it for herself. Unless she gets into a destructive pattern, or is being abused in any way, let her learn on her own. I'll keep this situation in my prayers!

 

[faith177]

I would still be involved, like how about starting slow not just letting go but allowing dating only as group dating or double dating. I have to say that I was not really restricted or taught properly and although my mother tried to tame me I was too strong willed and did what I wanted and was pregnant at 17, now I know that your daughters situation is different because you have obviously have been more involved and strict.

I however will not just let my daughter go at sixteen, we have also agreed to dating at sixteen but there will definately be limits, in the past dating was never alone there were things as shaperones and I think that it is dangerous to just let kids go when they hit a magic age they still need limits and guidance.

 

[pmcleanj]

After many days of tension between my daughter and I, Sunday was a day of communication. I told her calmly how I feel and she discussed her feelings.

You made a very good first step in establishing a model for communicating *as equal adults* with your daughter. It will probably take some time for her to really trust that you see her and respect her as an adult. She has observed you sheltering her for the last sixteen years, and has had only a few days to observe you treating her as an adult. But if you can keep it up, and gain her trust in this matter, you will enjoy several benefits.

First, she is more likely to ask for your advice, if she believes she can do so without making herself subject to your demands. To that end you'd be wise to accompany all your advice with some phrase like "Of course, you have to make your own decision about this, but you might want to consider <insert advice here>".

Second, establishing an adult-to-adult relationship now makes it more likely that she'll continue a strong relationship with you even after she's left your roof. Since with modern life expectancies you may share this planet with your adult daughter for longer than you've already lived, that's an investment well worth making.

[We have always sought to shelter our daughter by having her in private, Christian school and always emphasized that Christ calls us to a higher standard.

I think one thing other parents could learn from this, is the importance of letting our children experience some of the unsheltered environment that they will have to live in later, while we are still able to control the degree of exposure, and mediate the effects of that exposure. We need to teach our children how to live "in the world, but not of it". In retrospect, is there anything you would do differently?

 

[Tangnefedd]

I would still be involved, like how about starting slow not just letting go but allowing dating only as group dating or double dating. I have to say that I was not really restricted or taught properly and although my mother tried to tame me I was too strong willed and did what I wanted and was pregnant at 17, now I know that your daughters situation is different because you have obviously have been more involved and strict.

I however will not just let my daughter go at sixteen, we have also agreed to dating at sixteen but there will definately be limits, in the past dating was never alone there were things as shaperones and I think that it is dangerous to just let kids go when they hit a magic age they still need limits and guidance.

At sixteen I don't see how you can stop them living their own lives, they are adults to all intents and purposes, and it is very difficult to be heavy with them. You can't lock them in their rooms or forbid them to see their friends, that just does not work at that age. You just have to trust that the teaching that you gave them in formative years has rubbed off!

 

[faith177]

I do agree that you do have to believe in what you have taught them to a degree however I do not agree that they are like an adult in fact they still need there parents to enforce limits, my children will still have rules, and curfews and if those are broken then there will be consquences....

There is a marked difference in children who have set limits and consequences at home and those that do not, for example yesterday I was watching my 12 year old out the window he did not know I was watching. There was his cousin who is the same age with two skateboards both children know that they have to wear their helmets when they use the skateboard but only my child put his on yesterday, why, because in my house if kids do not wear helmets they immediately lose use of the skateboard.
In his cousins house they are not watched outside very often so first do not get caught very often, second when they do, they are yelled at and threatened to be grounded for months and are back outside within an hour.

This is just an example that kids need limits to be enforced, while I am not saying that my children will never test limits or make mistakes, they will not have the freedom to do whatever they want to do and not near what "everyone" else gets to do.

 

[Tangnefedd]

But a 16 year old isn't a kid. I know they are not technically adults until they reach 18, but you can't punish them in the way you would a younger child, it doesn't work and makes them resentful towards you. Your teenager may decide to leave home and that would be counter productive, you can't drag them back home again, the law doesn't allow that, or at least it doesn't in the UK. Obviously the rules in your house apply to anyone living there, whatever age, but outside the home it is very hard, and well nigh impossible, to insist that an older teenager complies with your code of conduct. It is far better to treat them like the adults they think they are. Explain your concerns but don't get heavy. We were all teenagers once, try to remember how you felt.

 

[pmcleanj]

But a 16 year old isn't a kid. I know they are not technically adults until they reach 18, but you can't punish them in the way you would a younger child, it doesn't work and makes them resentful towards you. Your teenager may decide to leave home and that would be counter productive, you can't drag them back home again, the law doesn't allow that, or at least it doesn't in the UK. Obviously the rules in your house apply to anyone living there, whatever age, but outside the home it is very hard, and well nigh impossible, to insist that an older teenager complies with your code of conduct. It is far better to treat them like the adults they think they are. Explain your concerns but don't get heavy. We were all teenagers once, try to remember how you felt.

Tangnefedd, you are a wise woman. A sixteen-year-old in Canada, too, has the right to leave her parent's home and authority if she chooses. 16-year-olds aren't very good or experienced at being adults, but they don't magically become more experienced when they turn 18, either. I believe that one contributor to the stress teenagers cause and experience, is our societal unwillingness to let them experience and practice maturing levels of responsibility to match their maturing physical bodies.

Orthodox Jewish parents take seriously that their sons are Bar Mitzvah at age 13, and their daughters are Bat Mitzvah at age 12. That seems very young to stand up and say "Today I am a woman". But if we begin, gently, to hold them to adult standards of responsibility at age 12, then by the time they are adults under the secular law they will have had some good supervised "On-Job Training" and be ready to carry through on their secular adult responsibilities.

And, if parents recognize that their children's independence will come sooner than they think, they will diligently work on preparing their children for that independence. Yes, for example, I will cringe next year if my twelve-year-old daughter decides to wear black nail-polish. So, while I've told her for years that she can choose to wear nail-polish when she's twelve, I've also made a point of pointing out appropriate and inappropriate examples of make-up wearing, and how those examples affect people's impressions of the wearer, and how other people's impressions affect the way they treat the wearer

I'm sure she'll make mistakes when she does start to stretch those wings -- and I'll be around to advise her on how to clean up her mistakes. But far better to give her a level of independance that will help her grow and encourage her to ask for advice, than to give her a level of restrictive protection that will cause her to flout resentfully any advice that's offered.

 

[Tangnefedd]

I don't pretend any of what I said is easy. My advice comes from having three daughters, and of course like any mother I tried to inflluence their behaviour post 16. From time to time they realised that the old dear was talking sense, but that was usually after they had got their fingers burnt!

When our children were very young we gave them small amounts of independence so that when they did reach 16+ it didn't come as such a heady experience.

I might add that we were considered fairly strict parents by our children, respect for others and politeness were mandatory!

 

[faith177]

I am not trying to say that we ought to treat our 16 yr olds as if they were 12 of course we will begin to give them more responsibility and freedoms to choose certain things. Just like now we are teaching him that the choices he makes now determines how much freedom and choices he will have in the future. We need to be able to trust him, but there are parents out there that let there children have two much freedom and let them go and do what ever they want without being a part of it and that is where it gets out of hand.

I do remember when I was a teenager and I had no enforceable limits set on me, I ran away all the time, hitchhiked all over bc and wa, did what ever I wanted and put myself in danger many times. I had friends that had stricter parents and they never did stuff to the extent that I did.

I believe there is a middle ground, of course it is not good if you never give your children space to grow and make choices. It is also not healthy to never set any limits and just let them on their own before they are ready or mature enough for that responsibility.