Your teen ready to date? Don’t panic!

Friends with benefits
Having said this, I know that for some teens these days that logic will have the wrong impact. They may say, “You’re right, I’m not ready for a real relationship, but I do want to have sex, so I’m going to find some friends to have sex with.” This is the concept from which the term friends with benefits is derived.

Obviously, I deplore such a concept. The main reason is that I believe sex should occur within a relationship. But another reason is that I don’t believe that in such situations both people are actually just friends. My guess is that one party has feelings for the other, and rather than not spend time with that person, will use sex as a bribe. And I’m particularly afraid that this person will be a young girl being taken advantage of by a boy, particularly if she has any self-esteem issues.

In addition, a recent study of students at Michigan State University^* showed that students in such a relationship are afraid to develop feelings for the other person in case those feelings aren’t reciprocated. So here you have young people who might be able to fall in love but are holding back their emotions on purpose, and yet still having sex. To me there is nothing sadder. I’m a big believer in the pleasure that can be derived from sex, but I also know that such pleasure pales in comparison to the passion that exists when the two people are in love.

Furthermore, if someone is regularly releasing sexual tension by having sex with a friend, that person is going to be less inclined to make the effort to find a lover. So what such people are doing is wasting months and years of their lives when they could be sharing love with someone else.

Finally, what happens when someone who has been having sex with one or more friends does fall in love? Will his partner feel comfortable hanging out with his female friends with whom he’s had sex or will she feel jealous? I think there’s going to be a good chance she is going to feel jealous, whether openly or not, and so she’s going to want to keep him away from these friends. And then if his male friends are friends with these females, this girlfriend (or boyfriend if the sexes are reversed) will be trying to keep them out of his life too. How complicated is that going to be?

I don’t believe this friends with benefits concept is running rampant among teens. It’s probably more likely to happen among 20-something-year-olds who are already sexually experienced. But once an idea like this gets out, then younger, impressionable people will pick up on it, particularly if it is depicted in popular TV shows and movies. So what should parents do with regard to this type of behavior? You have to be very frank and make sure that your teen knows that you are dead set against it and why. It should not be part of a message that says they should not have sex at all. If you offer them a blanket rejection of any sexual activity, then if they’re going to disobey you for the least offense, it frees them to disobey you for every offense. The next thing you know, they’re going to have their own set of friends with benefits, if not for intercourse, then maybe for oral sex. So you have to maintain a consistent message, and to me it’s that casual sex is not only forbidden, but that it’s not good sex, and even if you’re in a relationship, sex is something that you have to be very sure about because it does come with a lot of responsibility.

Everybody’s doing it
Children of all ages are always using the excuse that “everybody’s doing it.” When kids are young, you can ignore them because you have more control and can enforce your rules. But it’s much more difficult to do that with teens. And if all your daughter’s friends who have boyfriends are telling each other about how they’re having oral sex, the day she gets a boyfriend the pressure will be on for her to follow suit, not only from her boyfriend, but from her girlfriends.

I’m not going to promise that you can overcome this pressure, but you have to try, and the approach that I would suggest is to tell her that she’s special. Now this is going to take more than words. You’re going to have to go the extra mile to make her feel special. Don’t go overboard, but do make a special effort. On Saturday morning, take her with you to have her nails done. If you see a nice top in a window, buy it for her, telling her she’s special. If she wants to borrow a piece of your jewelry, tell her that you’ll let her because she’s special.

Telling her she’s special is planting a seed. Through your actions, you’ll be adding fertilizer to the idea. If you do a good job, hopefully the concept will become deep-rooted. Then if she’s not sure about whether she wants to have oral sex with her boyfriend, she’ll say no because deep down she’ll be saying to herself, “I’m special and I’m not going to have sex with just anyone.” There’s no guarantee this will work, but it has the potential to have the desired results, and so my advice is to give it a try.

Of course if she does have the desire, then she probably will go ahead. But maybe that means that the relationship is a good one; and while it may bother you, it’s not the end of the world. Your job, as I see it, is to get her to wait until she’s really ready. Once she reaches that point, then it’s ultimately out of your control.

Using the media to your advantage
On the one hand, the media is always depicting sex as if there are no consequences and as if everyone is doing it, so that the young people who aren’t are made to feel bad. But there is another side to this. Sadly, many of the media stars do suffer the consequences of their actions and they’re always in the papers getting arrested or going in for rehab, or other such things. So from your point of view, as a parent, here are examples to hold up to your teens to show that “the good life” isn’t all that good. Here are people with tons of money and fame, and they’re not happy. They can’t find satisfaction. They’re hooked on the fast life, not just drugs or alcohol, even though it doesn’t bring them any joy. And you can be sure your teens have seen these stories. What they perhaps haven’t done is internalize them. They haven’t made the connection between their lives and the lives of these celebrities. They may not fully understand that if they don’t toe the line, they might end up going down the same dead-end street. So that’s where you come in, but gently. Don’t beat them over the head with the latest antics of this star or that singer. Instead discuss the incident with them and let them know how sad it is, how these people are wasting their talents and their lives. Make them appear pathetic, not evil. There’s a certain appeal to evil, but there’s no appeal to being pathetic.

The prom
Whether your teen has a steady or not yet, there’s one day of the year when every teen who’s a senior, and often a junior, needs to have a date, and that’s the night of the prom.

It’s tempting to climb on my soapbox here and denounce the craziness that prom night has become, especially with relation to the cost, but I won’t. The excessiveness that is my concern in this book has to do with sex. There are two phenomena that occur on prom night. The first involves those couples who are going steady. For some reason, lots of girls who’ve resisted going all the way feel that the time to give up their virginity is on the night of their senior prom. I guess some of the “pressure” comes from the fact that the prom signals that high school is just about over, and so to mark this new stage in life there’s some need to lose one’s virginity. But there’s another reason that this occurs, and that’s because parents have been coerced into allowing teens going to a prom to stay out all night without adult supervision. While the whole class is supposed to be partying together somewhere, the opportunity for couples to separate themselves and find a place to have sex is there for the taking.

Honestly, if two 17-year-olds who have been going out for quite a while and are in a serious relationship have sex, it’s not the end of the world. However, if it’s something that you’re one hundred percent against, then it’s up to you to “ruin” prom night by making sure that your teen heads home when the official activities end. I just don’t want to be there when you make this announcement.

I am much more concerned by the casual sex that also seems to take place these days on prom night. While a couple who have been planning on having sex on prom night for months will come prepared with a condom, or at least I hope they will, two people who are not part of a long-term relationship might not. Of course in these times they might be having oral sex instead of intercourse, but you never know. So this type of casual sex is very risky. Certainly no one is going to bother to find out if the other person has been tested for STDs.

Video   Dr. Ruth on teens, sex Sept. 17: TODAY’s Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford talk to Dr. Ruth Westheimer about her new book “Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Teens and Sex Today.” Today show

An even bigger cause of concern is that whatever takes place might be because of alcohol or drugs. Alcohol is certainly not on the agenda at the prom, but in many cases teens find ways of circumventing such bans. I’m not even sure if it wouldn’t be better if the prom-nighters could go to a bar and drink in a civilized manner rather than guzzle whatever liquor they can get their hands on in their cars or in an alley. Yes, it’s possible to get quite drunk in a bar, but if the drinking takes place over a longer period of time, as everyone gets tired, the pace of drinking may slow down. However, if the idea is to get as drunk as possible in the shortest amount of time, then the effects are going to be multiplied. And drunk teenagers are not going to be responsible when it comes to sex.

Finally there’s the danger of date rape. If a young lady is just about out cold, she may wake up to find that she’s no longer a virgin, and it’s also possible that she may not know who took her virginity, and whether anyone else followed suit. Alcohol is not the only danger; there are drugs that someone can put into a drink that the victim will not be able to taste or sense in any way, but soon enough that person will be powerless to stop herself from being raped, nor will she remember what happened either. I’m not saying that these drugs are that easy for a high school senior to get, and that such rapes are commonplace, but they certainly do occur, though mostly as a result of alcohol rather than date rape drugs.

Prom night used to be fairly civilized, but teens have been pushing the envelope for a long time so that now for many high schoolers it’s got the quality of a bacchanal. That’s sad, but I guess it’s one more genie that we can’t put back in the bottle. If it’s a junior prom, you as parents should be a lot more conservative. Seniors are on the verge of breaking away, so you don’t have as much control. But at the very least, you should give your teen the “be careful” speech one more time.

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