New Teen Etiquette Question

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Okay, my son told me about his friends situation…(yes it is his friend) so am wondering what you all think you would have done and what you think will happen:</p>

<p>Boy likes Girl, they hangout, flirt on Myspace for all to see</p>

<p>Boy asks Girl to his school dance, a big holiday one that is this Friday</p>

<p>Boy asks to get together with girl this past weekend, she says she is “busy” but saves that time for him</p>

<p>Example of conversation on MySpace: Girl says: you are so much fun, you know its special when you can hang out and have fun while not realy doing anything…</p>

<p>Boy tells everyone about Girl, about dance, can’t wait for them to meet her, etc. (Girl goes to different school an hour away)</p>

<p>On Sunday morning, Girl’s MySpace changes to IN A RELATIONSHIP- as does her new boyfriend’s MySpace, but new BF is NOT Boy, son’s friend</p>

<p>Everyone is congratulating the new cute couple…</p>

<p>So, question is this, with dance this Friday:</p>

<p>Should date- with dinner, dance, photo’s etc- happen as “planned”
Should Girl back out of date
Should Boy as her to back out and ask another girl
Should Boy go stag to dance with his friends</p>

<p>What is the proper thing to do in this little drama…</p>

<p>PS- the Boy who commented to Girl ALOT has been silent to her since she got a BF…</p>

<p>PPS- Boy really thought she was the “One”</p>

<p>So, parents and young’un…what is the “etiquette” here (besides the Girl just being immture and playing both guys) My son wonders what his friend should do…his friend is a tad embarrassed, needless to say</p>

2

<p>Boy should IM or call girl and state his reservations about going to a dance with her when she is now in a relationship. He should offer her an easy out and run for the hills!</p>

<p>Or, the Myspace postings/in a relationship could be a joke. Who knows? He should definitely ask her about this before cancelling the date.</p>

3

<p>I think they should talk about it - verbally.</p>

4

<p>Stay away from crap like myspace in the future, oi. I don’t use it and it didn’t even exist when I was in high school so I don’t know how seriously to take things that people put on there. Personally all it looks like to me is a bunch of people fake-flirting with a bunch of other people…she might not have even been romantically interested in him from the beginning and he just misinterpreted it.</p>

<p>Lots of people go to dances and go through the normal pictures and flowers and whatnot routine without actually dating each other or being interested in doing so (I was one of them), and I’ve even known people who planned on going to a dance with someone months in advance, got involved in a relationship with someone else in the meantime, and still honored the prior plans (although it might have been out of convenience more than anything else, I don’t know). He should find out (through an actual real-time person-to-person conversation) whether or not she still wants to go, whether or not the other person is indeed her boyfriend, and if so whether or not that’s ok with the other person.</p>

5

<p>I think she should offer to back out…and yes, the myspace relationship stuff is so lame, as my Ds say…and of course he was more serious, obviouslly she was playing both guys…</p>

<p>but me, I can’t imagine being the guy and going to the dance with a girl I REALLLY liked and wanted to show off to my friends, and then she STARTS going out with a guy the week before, she never should have said yes to the dance</p>

<p>if she was my D, I would hate the tackiness of Ds behavior</p>

6

<p>Have these two ever met or is it purely internet? </p>

<p>My instinct is boy should talk to girl and get a feel for whether her new relationship is a joke or for real, but if I were him I wouldn’t want to go with her regardless. Even if the new MySpace relationship is a joke, she’s insensitive not to inform him. More likely it’s real (or as real as it seems this girl can get in a relationship right now), and she doesn’t deserve his time. It sounds like both of these kids have a lot of growing up to do. If there are other boys going to the dance alone he should do that. If he would be one of the few, he should ask the girl for permission to ask another girl to the dance. He should make a point of asking the nicest (and perhaps normally looked-over) girl to the dance.</p>

7

<p>OMG! boy shd lik CUL8r!! OMG! jst 2 mch 2 belv! rents shd stay far far away from ths stuff and MYOB! OMG!! LOL G2G</p>

8

<p>Am I right in my impression that this entire relationship took place on myspace??? </p>

<p>The stuff that goes on generally in myspace public comments is lighthearted banter and not to be taken seriously. Lots of flirting and joking. I mean, my DOG has a boyfriend and 47 dog friends including a dog-boyfriend. </p>

<p>No one takes the comments part seriously. My heterosexual kids get sexy public-comment solicitations from their same-sex heterosexual friends, and their opposite-sexy friends who are openly gay post sexy notes as well. That’s just part of the game. </p>

<p>It is possible to send private messages, and I assume that they may be more serious… but unless your son’s friend had a private communication with said girl, there probably NEVER was anything going on.</p>

<p>It’s like getting drunk and talking dirty in Sinner’s Alley…we’re not really wallowing in the Margarita’s at home while we type. It’s just a game. </p>

<p>The “in a relationship” things sometimes are also fake, but very often they are very real, and generally involve IRL friends (meaning “in real life”) and are the way that people on myspace telegraph that they are not open to new relationships. It kind of cuts down on unwanted private messages and friend requests from strangers (My dog, being single and unsure of her sexual orientation, gets a lot of those, but she only accepts non-humans as friends).</p>

<p>Anyway, I’m sorry for your son’s friend, but I think he took some playful public flirting way too seriously… the girl probably never had any intention of coming to the dance with him. I mean, would you let your high school daughter go to a dance with some boy she met on myspace who goes to a high school an hour away??</p>

9

<p>Well, the kids actually hung out for weekends for about a month- all day Saturday and or Sundays, which is forever in teen land…i think the relationship is “real” whatever that meens today</p>

<p>Yeah, friend got his hopes up and girl,well, she was kind of tacky</p>

<p>He is probably going to go stag with friends…she still hasn’t bowed out gracefully, but Boy doesn’t want to “show” her off and try to explain the just friends thing cause she has a new BF thing</p>

<p>Poor kid, but such is teen “romance”- my female gut tells me she really liked new BF more and was publically displaying the dating thing (or whatever it was) to get his attention…and voia!!</p>

<p>As my Boy’s mom says, well, its rough now, but better in the long run, Girl, well, she was just a flake</p>

10

<p>myspace bad.</p>

11

<p>“OMG! boy shd lik CUL8r!! OMG! jst 2 mch 2 belv! rents shd stay far far away from ths stuff and MYOB! OMG!! LOL G2G”</p>

<p>ROTF!
High school forum might yield some advice but I have to agree that parents should try not to get pulled in.
That said, boy should ditch the girl and show up at dance acting as if the situation rolled off his back.</p>

12

<p>NJERS, rents r stayn fer away frem dis…jest ShRan da 411 bouT TeEn LiFe…jeST takkIN 2 mes BoY boUt ItT</p>

<p>Son BrOUghT RenTs dA sTORy…</p>

<p>Da BeST iz Wen der Iz a BreakuP OnnMySpAce n da PerSon FindS out From da “Relationship” box…</p>

<p>My sON fiNDs Myspace Fun, bUt Has Learned To noT poST anything PerSonal…</p>

<p>Jest thoght It Was InterEstin HoW teEns maKe So much Of PersonAL life PublIC…</p>

13

<p>Pos Pos Pos Pos Pos Pos!!!</p>

<p>Grlz A Ho & G2g</p>

14

<p>I check my daughter’s Myspace every few days, and I look at her friend’s Myspaces to see what she has posted. I also look at her IM profile. She thinks I’m a wierdo stalker-mom for doing this. I think any parent who doesn’t check occasionally is either ignorant or neglectful.</p>

<p>I cannot believe the things kids put online for the world to see! Even though many of them have their Myspace set to “private” so that only their “friends” can see, that’s still a large number of people! (I made my daughter give me her password, I log on briefly on her password, look, and log off). My daughter has supposedly savvy friends who have their first & last names, age, hometown, and photo displayed on their Myspace and it isn’t even set to “private.” Hello, pedophile, come on in! And how can their parents not know this?</p>

<p>What kids put on their Myspace and their IM Profiles is unbelievable. I keep telling my daughter I’m not snooping… Profiles are PUBLIC. It’s like putting up a billboard next to the information superhighway. WHY do kids think only their friends will see it? If you don’t want your parents (or your friends’ parents) to see it, DON’T PUT IT IN YOUR PROFILE!</p>

<p>IMHO an IM conversation should be as private as a phone conversation (assuming neither party prints it out and brings it to school!). I don’t read DD’s IM conversations any more than I would listen in on her phone calls. But Profiles and Myspace are NOT private. I can’t believe more parents don’t check these things. I know quite a few parents who would be shocked at the vulgar and explicit rap lyrics their sons are quoting on their profiles. Maybe if the kids knew the parents were looking they’d clean up their acts.</p>

15

<p>Lafalum84, to me it depends on the age of the child. I don’t look at my son’s (18 years old). DD is 15 and I do look at hers occasionally and she knows that I do. In one situation, I called a friend and had her notify a parent who is a friend of hers but not of mine. The daugher in question was 14 and her site gave very specific information about ECs (where and when they were), what school she went to, etc. It also had a lot of revealing photos of the girl. I checked about a week later and the space had been completely changed. If it had been my daughter I would have wanted someone to tell me. I don’t read IMs or listen in on phone calls or check call logs of cel phones, that is private. But myspace is a public place…too bad for these kids that they are using it to break up with each other. Where are the parents who should be teaching these kids to build relationships? I should also say that when DD turns 16 I will probably not look anymore and I haven’t looked at her my space in a few months now. Middle school kids are a different story.</p>

16

<p>True, ebeeeee. I should clarify, DD is 14.</p>

17

<p>As a followup note the third article in this entry
<a href=“http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=19[/url]”>http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/indexn?blogid=19&lt;/a&gt;
which describes the new site Fakeyourspace, which promises to provide “hot” fake “friends” to your Myspace listing.</p>

18

<p>The MySpace aspect of the OP’s question isn’t really significant. The “issue” is, “Boy met girl, boy liked girl, girl liked boy, boy asked girl to dance, before dance night arrives girl decided she likes another boy better” - right? As such, the situation is hardly new or novel. The thing is, the girl probably kind of likes boy #1 too, but has recently reprioritized boy #2. As a Dad of a teenaged girl, after two sons, I’ve been getting an education in all this stuff, as to which my boys were blissfully oblivious.</p>

<p>At the most recent “big deal” dance at the local high school this scenario played out with several couples - at least two of which involved my daughter. Everyone ended up going to the dance with their original date, even though some of them were no longer “couples” and others were only a couple in the eye of one of the members of the couple. Or, to put it another way - typical teenaged drama-based social life. Some of the boys’ feelings were hurt. Some of the girls will “hate [other girl] forever” (it’s never the boy’s fault, apparently.) Everyone will survive.</p>

<p>My advice, for as little as it’s worth? The boy should man up and take the girl, accept that he’s not the lead dog right now, and make nice. It’s a good life skill to develop, and he may as well start working on it now. By all means he should fight the temptation to say (or post) mean things about the girl, a lowlife urge many boys fail to overcome.</p>

19

<p>But should the girl expect him to take her after treating him so badly?</p>

20

<p>“So badly”? What do you mean by that? They got along, he asked her to the dance, she said yes, and then she met “Mr. Right” (this week’s "Mr. Right, anyway.) I seriously doubt that she intended to hurt anyone’s feelings - that’s just the way the cookie crumbles in teen romance. If she’s got some other boy “listed” as her official BF - yeah, maybe she should pay for her own ticket, if he bought them. On the other hand, the way this stuff goes - if they go to the dance and have a great time, it could be the other guy’s turn to be all mad and sulky next week. Seriously, the sooner they all learn to deal with social and romantic setbacks with class and grace the better off they’ll all be. With a little parental guidance this could be boy #1’s chance to rise above the events. Might work out for him one way, might work out another. But there’s nothing to be gained by being all ****y about it.</p>