Help! Advice, please?!
OmegaDotter is now nine years old, and in third grade.
She has a crush on T., who is ten and in fourth grade.
“He’s so beautiful!” she told me one afternoon a week or so ago. We drove past his house on the way to gymnastics, and he was outside; she was right—he is a very nice looking boy. At bedtime, I snuggled with her and asked her whether he was a nice boy, and that just because someone looks pretty on the outside doesn’t mean that person is nice. She rolled her eyes at that, because she’s heard it often enough that she was able to recite the words with me as I said them.
The next day she didn’t have the crush. T. was mean and a bully.
A few days later, she did. He was not mean and not a bully.
A few days later I., who lives nearby, came by with T., she went off with them to play, and all the kids hung out. She danced into the house later that evening and said, “I just went on a sort of…date!”
:: BOGGLE ::
Okay, almost immediately she allowed as to how it was not a real date, that they had all played on the trampoline at T.’s house, and gone for a walk, but boy howdy, did she have a crush on T.
The dotter informed me that night at bedtime that T. “cusses a lot. I don’t like it.” (Somehow or other, we have managed to raise a child who, though snotty and sarcastic and an almost classic Queen Bee [ugh], does not cuss. In fact, she has started taking OmegaDad to task for his “bad language”. This amuses me to no end, because OmegaDad is, in fact, quite restrained in the cussing department.) She said she was going to tell him he shouldn’t cuss.
I thought it might be a good idea to phrase it differently—we are working on “I” phrases and explaining how things make us feel—so maybe she should say that she really doesn’t like cussing and would he please try not to cuss around her.
I am, in the meantime, still boggling.
This evening, I. and T. came by just before I was picking the dotter up from gymnastics. When we got back, I said that the dotter could go over and play, but had to be back by 9:30. She returned home at 9…when she realized what time it was, she announced she was taking the dog for a walk, she’d be back in a half hour, and went back out.
Of course, she went by T.’s house.
T. walked her home.
The dotter then informed me that T. had asked her if she would “go out” with him.
Oy.
So she has been informed that she can go out with him in a group of friends, hang out, play at his house, etc., but she cannot “go out” with him on dates because she is much (OmegaMom gasps, swoons, places a trembling hand upon her forehead) (did I mention MUCH?!) too young to be going on dates.
OY. Isn’t this kind of stuff supposed to wait for a few more years?! I have been rather blindsided by the whole thing. I am, of course, immensely pleased that she’s sharing the whole dang thing with us, and that she’s been discussing whether he’s a nice boy or not with me, and giving examples. But for Kozmik All’s sake, I thought we were safe from this insanity until she was 12 or 13 or something like that.
OY.
She told me that she told him her “Two Secrets”. These turned out to be a) how old OmegaDad and I are, which kind of embarrasses her, and b) that she’s adopted, and it was hard to tell. When I mentioned that it was pretty obvious that she was adopted, she said that she meant it was hard to talk about being adopted. Sigh.
Anyway, does anyone have any advice? Puh-leeze?
posted in Friends, OmegaDotter, Parenting, Pop Culture | 7 Comments
