by Courtney Smith

Created on: January 12, 2007   Last Updated: May 17, 2007

So what do you do when you hear "I Hate You" for the first time out of your fourteen year old's mouth? Well let me tell you about my encounter, I only have one child, a fourteen year old blond haired, blue eyed, walking hormone; He is a freshman in high school this year and is absolutely girl crazy. His infatuation for these girls he sees in the hallway has taken a tole on his academics. How do i handle this? I try to take away some of the things he loves more than these girls. i try taking the PS2, the Xbox and the computer. In turn what does he do? He gets on his cell phone and downloads AIM so he can talk to all of these girls and totally disregard the fact that his grades needed to improve. So after his grades dropped another letter grade I finally took his cell phone. That meant that if he had sports practice than he would find a way to get to and from without my help and it also meant that he would not be able to talk to all of these promiscuous girls that tempt his already raging hormones. After hearing all of the excuses of " You don't understand" and "Nobody else's parents do this" I finally stepped back and let him have the computer back. Maybe I was being to harsh? Before I went to bed that night I figured I would just browse through his phone for pictures, music, and phone numbers. I had a rude awakening because what i found was a picture of his erect penis that had been sent to twenty-two girls who had been begging him for this picture. I was completely horrified by the sight of my son and wondered what should be done at this point. In a world like ours, we can not shelter our kids from sex and other things that follow but we can protect them. My first instinct as a parent was that I did not want my baby boy going out and having sex or even oral sex but if I disciplined him for this he would just be more secretive. After taking a few days to think about it and giving my son's phone back to him, I finally decided to just sit down and talk to him. When he walked in from school one day after kissing his girlfriend goodbye I made him sit down and surrender his cell phone to me. I told him I was going to look through his pictures and he became panicked at once. Without open his phone I told him that I already knew what was on his phone and advised him on the ways of the world. We established some boundaries and as a last resort to keep my baby boy close to me I gave in and gave back all of the prized possessions that I had taken from him. I told him I would lighten up on his discipline in exchange that he come and talk to me about girls. Even though he is fourteen, if he decides to have sexual encounters he needs to be armed with condoms to not only protect himself from being financially responsible for something that he causes but to protect the girl and her parents from the burdened of a child having a child. We can not keep our children from being curious or influenced by other people so what do we do? We arm them with the proper knowledge and tools to do what they want to do but do it in a responsible manner because there are very few children that can march to the beat of their own drum.

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