Why Letting Children Date is Important.

Parents, let your children date. This is a topic I feel strongly about, and I will explain from experience why it is important that children should be allowed to date starting from middle school on.

I am a 20 year-old college student, and I feel that my life has many blank spaces in it. When I look back on the past, I don't see middle and high school years spent dating and having fun; I see them wasted wishing I could join in with the rest of the kids and socializing and experimenting like they were. And yes...that is experimenting. I believe it's a necessary stage to development, because otherwise, a kid will only grow more and more curious about that sort of of...stuff, whether you like to admit it or not.

It all began when I was 11 years old. The kids around me were already going with the opposite sex and watching movies together or going to their houses. This is the age when I believe children come of age, and based on experience, if they're not allowed to do that, they will be immature or act immature because they're trying to experience those past times. That's what's happened to me. I keep living in the past because that's where the experiences should have occurred. I'm sad about it a lot because it's lost.

So...I'm sitting here watching the other kids around me go out with people. I develop my first crush, but I unknowingly turned into a stalker because I knew I wasn't allowed to date until I was 16, and then I was afraid to talk about this stuff, and I wasn't allowed to go to boys' houses either, not even just as friends or for a D&D session. I don't have a healthy social life. I might write a thread regarding why it's important for parents to social lives for their kids as well.

When 7th grade rolls around, the kids at school are going out with each other and I'm left out. I turned to writing, working on an 'Animorphs' fanfiction and pretending I could have my crush and I couldn't convince my grandparents to let me date, no matter how much I asked or what I did. I was in pain when I listened to the other kids talk about who they were going with and what they were doing for fun, and I was left on the sidelines writing my story, creating my imaginary social life and only wondering what it must be like.

You know what that experience taught me? My crush was going out with another girl. Since I couldn't ask him out myself because I had to wait 'til I was 16 and I was 12, I wasn't just gently jealous of her, how it should have been. It was pure resentment that sometimes bordered on hatred, because every moment he spent with her or anyone else in high school, only took away any chance I might have had with him in the future.

Another danger of not being allowed to date at a young age is that a child may start to live in their imagination. That's what's happened to me. My dating life is imaginary. I spent my years from when I was eleven to sixteen imagining what it must be like. And you know what? Fantasizing is worse than seeing it for yourself. I read about this stuff in comicbooks or in novels because I have no real love life even now. Several times it has led to disappointment in the real thing because I had to wait for a real date for so long, and I had gone with a friend. Don't put your kid through that.

When high school rolled around, I began to give up on boys because of a dumb rule my grandpa had imposed on me. There were so many boys I know I could have gone out with and learned what the world of dating was like, but I had to stay home instead and overhear what the other kids were experiencing. My grandfather also failed to notice the importance in my dressing in certain ways to catch a boy's attention (not provacatively, just femininely), and so now I don't really care about how I dress. I knew I could never have a boyfriend when I was a young teen. I never got asked out and I could never ask one out until I was 16, again. I recall an incident where I wanted to go to a dance with a boy, Josh, when I was 14, and my grandparents called my dad and stepmom to ask them if it "was a date" or not. Today I feel that the best years of my life were all taken away for an outdated rule. My grandparents are very nice people, but they live on old-fashioned rules and they just can't seem to see any way past them.

Wow, this essay is a long one. Sorry for grammatical errors or lack of a thesis statement. Just read my little anecdotes and remember them as a cautionary tale. Parents, don't deny your children anything. When it comes to dating, if a kid is allowed to date but chooses not to, they probably will not regret it because it was their choice. But, if a parent doesn't let them and everyone else (meaning the other schoolkids around them) are dating, the child will only feel left out and that they were denied experiences. They might turn to stalking their love because they know they can't have him or her, like how I did. Parents, let your children date, or face the consequences of having an angry, disgruntled child. Nothing is more painful than being left out and not knowing how to find someone to love.

I hope this information will come in handy for parents of 11-year-olds and young teens.