"Oh, really?"
"Yes, he is my boyfriend," she replied matter-of-factly.
"What does that mean? " I asked.
"I don't know, but Gracie told me it means something. She doesn't know either."
My friend Holly's favorite parenting advice is: Never freak out, no matter what your children tell you. She does not advocate permissiveness AT ALL, just a general sense of being a safe place for your children to come and talk.
Despite my desire to lecture K on how ridiculous it was for anyone under 18 to have a boyfriend, :-) I kept my cool and nonchalantly explained that there is no reason a 4 or 5 year old should have a boyfriend. I explained the point of boyfriends was to find who God had picked out to be your husband...and that is a long way away. Until then, plain old friends will suit her just fine.
"OK," she replied and skipped away.
Wouldn't it be great if the conversation was that easy in a few years?
6 comments:
As the mother of 2- and 3-year-old girls, I LOVE this post! Now if I can just remember this advice when our day comes!
Um, wouldn't it be great if this conversation was that easy when you were 24? ;)
Got your email -- response coming in the morning.
What great advise... I will have to keep that in mind!
Great advice! A few of the little ones at my school tell me they are the boy/girl friend of so and so...we just roll with it and usually it goes away. It doesn't mean they can't be friends!
My oldest daughter (who is 5) and her daddy have an agreement that she will not have a boyfriend until she is 21 and, at that time, daddy will get to pick him out.
She is very content with that arrangement....for now. :-)
If only they kept the logic they have at 4 when they enter into the teen years. Life would be so easy. I have a 13 year old boy who is so anxious about not having a girlfriend that he's almost undone over it. He doesn't want a girlfriend, but he doesn't want to be "weird" - uggh- telling him he's set apart for a special purpose when all he wants is to be like everyone else is trying at best- so I'm back to my knees hoping for Divine Intervention on this one.
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