Most parents have some fears about the day when their children will start dating and for many parents it also marks the point at which a son or daughter is making the break from childhood to adulthood. Often, it is also viewed as the point at which your children take their first steps to strike out on their own and this is generally seen as a signal that they no longer need you. This is clearly not the case. Dating is merely a phase on the long path of normal teen development and they certainly do still need you - and will continue to do so for many years to come. Nevertheless, this is sometimes a difficult time in a teenager's life and there is much which you can do to make life simpler for both of you.
As is the case with most other things, success in dating starts with education and it is crucial to sit down with your teenagers before they start dating to talk about what goes into making a good relationship. It is very easy to assume that your children will know the ins and outs of dating but they almost certainly won't. If you think about it, the greater part of their knowledge on dating will probably have been gained from television where the majority of the relationships are not filmed to reflect the real world but merely to entertain the audience. Your children need to understand precisely what it means to be in a supportive and loving relationship and there is no better way to learn just what this means than by talking with you about your own views based upon personal knowledge and experience. Of course, it is also the case that your children will learn not merely from what they hear, but also from what they see with their own two eyes and so setting a good example in the way that you conduct your own relationship is vital.
When your children start dating you should enter into what should become an ongoing dialogue about relationships. Your teenager's dates are not always going to go as you or they expect and your children are going to need somebody to come to when they run into problems. So, it is extremely important that you maintain a line of communication and continue to talk about how they ought to be treating other people in a relationship as well as just how they should expect to be treated themselves.
Meeting your teenager's date for the first time can often be a tense time, but you should try to make this meeting as relaxed as possible and be both kind to and respectful towards your child's date. And don't make the classic mistake of giving the couple a lecture on this first meeting laying down the rules for seeing each other. Should you wish to lay down any rules then these are for your teenager and not for his or her date and so ought to be discussed in private and with your child alone. Also, while it is possible that you will not be happy with your child's choice of date, you must not let this show and should go out of your way to be supportive. After you have taught your children how to conduct themselves in a relationship you have to trust them to make their own decisions and should not get involved unless you believe that the relationship is putting your teenager in danger.
It is not always easy to watch your kids growing up and meeting and getting close to new people. But, provided you do your part and make sure that they know what they ought to expect from and how they ought to conduct themselves in a relationship, then there is every probability that things will go well and difficulties will be minimized for both of you.
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