Young Love

Around Thanksgiving time, one of my children came home and admitted to having a crush.  A few days later, this child informed me with delight that their crush reciprocated the feelings.  Hmmm....  We had a little discussion about being too young to date.  The next day I was informed that at this school if you have a crush and your crush likes you back, then you are boyfriend and girlfriend.  This led to another discussion about being too young to date, and too young to have a girlfriend.  (Yeah, yeah, so it is my only son we are referring to!)

I told him that there would be no touching, not even hand holding, and no being alone together.  I suggested that this was a good opportunity to learn about being friends with girls and maybe a time to start thinking about the things he liked and might want in a future wife.  I know, too young to date but not too young to think about marriage!  She was a nice girl, quiet and sweet and they walked to and from school together.

Honestly, I'm still a bit at a loss on how to deal with it all.  I know they hung out at the park, but I think it was always with a pack of other kids, so I didn't make it a big deal.  It just seemed kind of cute and harmless.

Poor boy came home yesterday looking glum and said Emily (her name was Emily) had dumped him.  He seemed quite upset about it.  So I guess this whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing was more serious than I'd thought, which is not good. She dumped him in favor of another boy.  The brazen hussy!

I thought we'd talked about not having a girlfriend and it seems that was not really taken to heart.  Now I think I'll give him a few days to grieve, and then I'm going to have to lay the smack down.  Any advice?