What do you do if your parents won’t let you date?

Many times parents and teens don’t agree on things and one of the biggest arguments are when to date. What do you do if your parents don’t let you date? Also, if you are a parent, how do you handle this situation when your teen wants to date but you don’t agree he or she is old enough?

My parents didn’t let me date until 16, which simply meant that I dated without calling it “dating.” Hanging out, “studying” (Ah, fond memories of algebra), bike rides…the fact that it didn’t look like what they called a date didn’t change the fact that it was a courtship.

Keeping that in mind as my daughters grew up, I didn’t try to set an arbitrary age for them to “date” - I just tried to be aware of where they were at, socially, and then made sure they knew I was caring about what and how they went out.

I don’t know how well it worked. I think part of being a teen is figuring out how to get away from ANY parental control, even the most lenient. But those were my experiences.

Sometimes what a young person thinks of as dating or having a boyfriend is not the same thing parents think it means. I would advise parents to talk to their teen before assumin you both are on the same page. You might be surprised. I have known parents who assumed that there was nothing going on between a girl and a boy and there was a lot of experimenting going on.

Parents, talk, then talk again, and then talk some more. Teens change their thinking and their behavior as the mature.