I was tickled pink the other day when my almost 13 year old son came home as happy as Larry declaring at the top of his voice "I have a girlfriend!" I was proud, because he wasn't afraid of sharing his world with me and his brother.
He did something I would never have done with my parents because they were so strict about 'who' my friends were, and scrutinised everything about my friends before they gave them a chance. My best friends in my first year of high school were 'bad influences' because they were from single parent families (ha! And now that I am a single mother, I'm a bad person and my children are being strayed into bad ways). Yet ironically, I still keep in contact with those friends through the distant of Facebook, and they are all quite successful in their own right - one is a leading Sydney radio announcer, one is a mother of three and is a college professor in IT and another is living a semi-retired life in beautiful Queensland. So for my son to come to me so excited to tell me that he has his first girlfriend, I was chuffed.
Throughout the weekend, he had Skype calls from her, they organised a double date for the middle of the school holidays and he talked about her a little. I asked questions to see how far they had gone - like holding hands or if he'd had his first kiss, and maturely he said 'No, we are more friends than anything else at this stage.' And that's OK.
But then we had a step back in time. We went to the local shopping mall and bumped into the school bully he had at primary school. Over the 7 years he was at school with this kid, this kid played 'murder tiggy' with him and other kids with a stick in his hand, trying to stab people in the back (and left a 20cm scratch down my son's back) and he tied my son to a tree with a volleyball net my son was trying to get down leaving him with rope burns on his legs from struggling to get out. They were two of the worst things of many things he did to my son. My youngest son asked his brother 'are you still friends with that kid?' to which my kind-hearted son replied 'yes.' Horrified, I said, 'how can you still be friends with him? You don't go to the same school as him anymore, and you have no reason to see him. He's not your 'friend', he is just someone who you once went to school with.' And as I said this, we walked passed a confectionary shop and saw this kid physically stealing from the shop and pulling a friend out by his hair to leave as quickly as possible. I turned to my son and said 'you really want to say you're friends with that?' And he saw how stupid this kid was being, and realised that that kid was no friend of his.
But the declaration that he had a girlfriend was validation to me that I was doing the right thing with my kids. That the communication doors are always open, that I've taught them and continue to teach them properly about relationships (or they have seen first hand some of the hardships that I've been through). And I hope that, no matter what, those doors will stay open, and they never feel like they are being judged and that I can steer them to make the right decisions for themselves while they believe they are making those decisions by themselves.
To me, a first love is sweet and necessary to know that you're in touch with your feelings, and it's just another part of growing up.
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