Question: How do I handle my 11-year-old daughter who's telling me she's in a relationship?
Dr. Kevin Skinner: This one's a little bit harder because, uh, in a relationship at that age is, um, the mind doesn't understand what's happening. An 11-year-old can't make important, crucial decisions regarding a relationship. They're just so young.
So I hear that my child's pulling away from me and they're not opening up. That means in some ways that they've aligned with this other person. So ultimately here, we want to see if we can work on the relationship with the child. We might actually invite the person they're in a relationship with over to our home. What do they say—keep your enemies closer to you?
My point there is, you might not want your child in their relationship, but interacting with them will give you a much better feel and understanding of what's actually happening in the relationship. So, one possibility—and again, these are just possibilities—is that I would want to temper their desire or appetites for being in a relationship at that age. But I also want them to develop friendships.
So I might be curious: "So tell me about this friend. Help me understand." Because they may be picking up from you as a parent that you disapprove, and they don't wanna give up. So they're pushing you out and replacing parental influence with the influence of this friend. Ask, "What do you like about this person? Tell me about them. What are their traits or characteristics?" Your curiosity might help if they feel like you genuinely want to understand them.
Now, there may be times where you have to create appropriate boundaries because your child can't create boundaries—like having them home on time or monitoring communication you're not comfortable with. You might have to help them create boundaries by creating boundaries for them. And you do it out of love. They might reject it, they might push back, but they're eleven and they may resent you for a period of time.
But there's always a rule first: Love first. If your child knows that you love them—we create love before rules. If rules dominate, the child generally is gonna pull back because they don't feel the love. So love first, so you can have the most influence.
I think if you can say, "Look, I need to—can I have a reboot here? I think eleven is young, and I don't know how to handle this. I've never been in a situation as a parent. Help me understand what you're experiencing." Curiosity is a good starting point. If you continue to deal with that kind of struggle, I would probably get some counseling to get additional ideas on how to handle it.
