Mind your own damn business

Grace is a contributor to this blog. This blog is public. Sure, we don't advertise it to our friends and family, but it can be found. So I gotta be careful what I say and don't say.

Same goes for Facebook. Grace and I are friends on Facebook. Always have been, hope we always will be. She's never done anything to make me want to limit my profile to her, and I've respected her "space" in the social networking world.

(That being said, I'm thinking her honest comments on this matter would be priceless ;-) )

Moving on.

While I was growing up in my family, there was this curiosity about my romantic feelings that induced well-intentioned intrusion. My mother would question me about every boy I mentioned. And then she'd speculate about it with my grandmothers. Or my sisters. Or her friends at church. I hated it. It made me never want to date anyone. By the time I was in high school, I avoided discussing boys with my family at all costs. I had one boyfriend during all of high school (it lasted less than two months) and the rest of the time I hung out with gangs of friends. I remembered this feeling of resentment when I came time for me to parent my own adolescent daughter.

When Grace started high school, my advice to her was to have fun and not to get too serious with any one guy. Why? Because what's the point, really? You've got a lifetime to settle down with someone and commit a good bit of your time and resources to them. But you only have one chance to be a teen. One chance to make friends and hang out with them without too many time pressures. One chance to be carefree and find out who you are. In my opinion, the best shot a teen has at figuring out who they are is to do that independent of an attachment to a significant other. I told her that while she's a teen, she should look at romantic relationships and dating as like a best friend you happen to kiss sometimes. You don't start that relationship by someone walking up to you and saying, "let's get together this weekend." You don't have that friendship to the exclusion of others. And you don't hold on to that friendship if the other person isn't being a good friend.

Grace has been interested in boys on and off since she was in 7th grade. In these four years, there have been many episodes of fluttering feelings, heavy beating hearts, excitement and nerves, followed by cooling offs, mellowing outs, and resolutions to "just be friends." All in all, I'm fine with all of it. She seems to be able to identify the deadbeats and steer clear of them, regardless of how many times they hit on her. In the last month, she's been hanging out with one guy, trying to decide if he's someone she likes. Good, just as long as she keeps me up to speed on what's going on.

See, I figure she doesn't want me meddling in her life and getting off on the emotional volatility and possibilities of her romances. The best thing I can give her is a solid foundation to lean on when she needs me. She needs me to protect her, but not in a meddling way. I protect her because I love her, not because I find it exciting. I am not a matchmaker, an advice columnist, a gossip blogger, or a girlfriend. I am Grace's mother. I need to behave accordingly when she is a teenager in love.

Unfortunately, I'm not the only adult in Grace's life. There's lots of people who do get off on her possible romances. And meddle.

A year ago, Grace had her first real interest in a boy that she wanted to go on a date with. Nice kid. She mentioned it to her father. Who said he wanted to meet him. He told his sister. Who flew in to visit without Grace's knowledge. And at an orchestra concert where both Grace and the boy were performing, Grace's father waited to be introduced after the show. Grace's aunt pulled me to the side and said, "I hear Grace has a boyfriend! Was that him sitting to the right? With the brown hair? What do you think of him?" Ahem. Grace was 15 and the boy was 14. I think they are friends.

And then there's the times people meddle on facebook.

The last time Grace had a boyfriend, her father took the liberty posting on his facebook wall that he had just friended the boy as a way of keeping up with who he was. I think he was trying to say something witty about how technology today had completely changed his role as a responsible father. The romance was over a week later, in a quiet way. I don't know whether the boy retained his facebook connection with Grace's father.

Every time Grace puts up a picture on facebook of herself with a boy, my mother calls and asks who it is. Truth be told, most of her friends who are boys are gay. I never know what to tell my mother at that point. And I can never figure out why she asks me who the boys are and never who the girls are.

And then there's the latest event, the one that set my mind to blogging on this topic. A few days ago, Grace wrote on her facebook status that she went downtown with a boy. One of her aunts opened a facebook account less than a day ago. When she saw the status, she wrote, "Your aunt is asking who's [insert boy's name here]?" Subtle.

Is it any wonder teens avoid letting their parents see their facebook profiles? Grace happily accepts friend requests from all sorts of family and adult friends of the family. And she allows everyone to see her complete profile. Both her grandmothers, all her aunts and uncles and cousins, her parents and stepparents, and troves of friends of all these adults. All wanting to get a deeper look into the life of this teen. And comment on it. I give Grace a lot of credit; if I were her, I would have cut most of these people off a long time ago, what with their constant commentary on everything in her life.

Adults, remember what it was like to be a teenager. If a teenager allows you to take a peek into their real life, don't abuse that permission. Respect who they are and don't make embarrassing comments. If you do that, you only reenforce the teenager's desire to limit your access. And some of us parents are grateful that the teens trusts us with that peek.