Coping with Your Daughter’s First Boyfriend

It’s finally happened; your daughter has got her first boyfriend! It’s often an emotional roller-coaster ride for everyone and it’s hard to know how to feel about the changing dynamics between you and your daughter. But fear not, because you will cope with the new arrival and still be able to have an important relationship with your daughter.

What to Do When Your Daughter Gets Her First Boyfriend

Now is not the time to remanence with her about how you were 28 before you first had a boyfriend. Nor to share about how you had to meet in the kitchen with your parents sitting between you. Instead, you need to accept that times have changed, and dating is now a whole new ballgame! Here are some tips to help you cope with your daughter’s new boyfriend:

• Stay Calm and Be Polite: you don’t need to be too friendly or too intimidating. It’s important to be yourself.

• Don’t Lecture Her About Being Too Young to Have A Boyfriend: you don’t have to like it, but you also don’t want to cause a rift between you both. You must respect her decision and trust that she will be responsible in all her actions.

• Encourage Her to Be Open About Her Relationship: you want your daughter to feel that she can talk about him with you. It’s important to be able to talk to her about how she is feeling and if she needs any advice from you.

• Don’t Judge A Book by Its Cover: keep an open mind about this boy, don’t make any snap decisions and spend the time to get to know them properly.

• Give Them Time to Interact with You and Your Family: this person is important to your daughter, so you should make the effort to invite them round for lunch or tea with the family or take them with you on a family outing.

• Give Them Privacy and Space, But Not Too Much: you need to make sure that there is a balance of having privacy, but not letting them spend time alone in her room with the door shut, for instance.

• Make Sure That They Know They Ground Rules: set your expectations on how they must behave from the start.

• Don’t Argue with Your Daughter in Front of Them: this only makes you look bad, not your daughter.

• Never Make Your Daughter Choose Between You and Them: this will often cause them to be secretive and hide things like they are sneaking out to see him outside, and they will always find ways to still see them.

• Make Sure She Doesn’t Neglect Her Other Friends, Studies and Hobbies: it’s most probably not going to last forever, so she needs to keep her eggs in more than one basket.

There’s nothing you can do about your daughter meeting her first boyfriend. It’s going to happen whether you like it or not, but if your able to be ready to accept the reality of the situation. It’s still darn hard though!