All My Children

I myself think that the teen years up to sixteen, seventeen or eighteen are generally the time for an informal kind of companionship between boys and girls, mainly in groups.

You get lots of opportunities to learn about the opposite sex and your own sex by being with other young people regularly in school, in Sunday School, in camps, around the neighbourhood, in dropping in and out of other families‘ homes. This kind of sociability allows you to get to know others casually, which is the most comfortable way for most early adolescents. You can talk as much or as little as you feel like doing, instead of having to fill up all the silences, the way you feel you have to do when there are only two people present. You can be on school and youth club committees to carry out projects and social activities. You can participate in the activity clubs that exist in many schools—a Spanish club, a stamp collectors’ club, a nature- study club, etc.

There may be plays at school or at a local club or society to act in. There are school and neighbourhood games to play in, sports events to watch, picnics to go on. There are dances at some schools, at clubs and at homes. In Britain there are many clubs for young people and there are also organisations which foster voluntary service to the community. Many religious organisations sponsor youth clubs, while others are provided by local education authorities or national organisations like the Scout and Guide movements, the Young Farmers’ clubs and others. In addition organisations like the Youth Hostels Association, Ramblers’ Association, Naturalists’ Trust and many sports clubs provide opportunities for young people to take part in activities, either singly or in groups.

Another way to organise social life at this age is of course by group dates—when a crowd goes to the movies, to a bowling alley, to a swimming pool, or the beach, together. These excursions need a parent along in early adolescence, to give leadership, to drive the car, to be sure that a wild character in the group who is trying to prove his courage doesn’t get everyone into trouble.

Group activities of all kinds give you opportunities to watch closely other young people of both sexes, see different personalities at work, learn what in the opposite sex appeals to you, learn what members of the opposite sex appreciate or despise, learn what are useful conversational approaches and responses, learn how to let your own good qualities show without having to show off. Those who are most sophisticated, self-assured and talkative naturally take the leadership. The quieter ones can observe and go at their own speed.

When a teenage group gathers in someone’s home for a committee meeting, a formal or informal party or a casual get-together, one or two parents should be in the house.

They don’t have to be in the same room with the young people or in sight all evening. But they should greet the guests on arrival and the guests should say goodbye to them at the end. They can, for instance, be in the living-room as the guests arrive and then retire to a den or bedroom. Or the guests might go to a recreation room. It is appropriate for parents to drop in with food and drinks or if the party is getting too raucous or too silent. The host-parents have an obligation to the parents of the guests to be near by and to be in charge. All of this is ordinary social courtesy.

Though I think that most teenagers are not ready to appreciate the real values of dating and going steady before they are sixteen or seventeen or eighteen years old (and some not till they are considerably older still), I don’t mean that a boy and girl under that age can’t ever have a private conversation, away from the crowd. A boy can walk a girl home from school and from other gatherings and parties. He can visit her occasionally at her home (when the family is near by) or even take her to a movie once in a while if her parents know him and approve.

What I’d advise against as a regular pattern for young teenagers is weekly, prolonged, secluded dates because they invite progressive physical intimacy before there is real love and because a premature pairing-off takes young adolescents out of circulation just when it is most valuable for them to be finding out about all kinds of young people.

If a young teenage boy should ask a girl to go steady with him, I think she‘d be wiser to answer that she appreciates the honour and is fond of him (if she is), but she doesn’t think it’s sensible to pair off because it’s so important at this age to get to know many kinds of people.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Group Companionship between Boys and Girls, mainly in Groups

• Children, Kids, Teenagers get all it right, what you should teach about juvenile offences or delinquency? part 2
• Romance and Sex in Later Adolescence: To Tell or not to Tell
• Child’s Play, Toys as Symbols
• Family Games, Educational Games, Puzzle Playing Together, Parent and Kids’ Emotional Involvement continue...
• Something to Identify Twins (Non-identical twins) continue...
• Science and Nature Games
• The Civilizing Function of Games
• Street Children, break-up of Families in the South Africa continue...
• Something to Identify Twins (Non-identical twins)
• The Adolescent Years: Bodies in Motion continue...

Trackback URI | Comments RSS