<p>It seems to me that asking your parents if it was OK would take all the fun out of it anyway.</p>
<p>But I’d say no, for a high schooler. But I wouldn’t use surveillance to make sure it wasn’t happening in the afternoon either. My best guess is that it didn’t, but it might have.</p>
<p>Having an open relationship with your child about sex is the healthiest way to ensure that they have “safe” sex that doesn’t result in pregnancy or an std. I think sneaking around or having sex in cars is kind of a right of passage…remember when we were young?? </p>
<p>It would completely depend on the circumstances. Is it a new boyfriend or have they dated for years? I think if they are being responsible and respectful, then it’s OK.</p>
<p>Not saying I am crazy about the idea at all, but it’s one of those things that you have to weigh out.</p>
<p>I have been brooding about this general topic for the past few days, because of this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine article about the sex ed class at Friends Central (a ritzy Quaker school in the close-in 'burbs here). That’s what I really want/ed for my kids, including when they were teens: that they feel comfortable with themselves and their bodies, that their sexuality be a source of joy, strength, and connection, not pain or shame (or disease). </p>
<p>And I do not do very much to communicate that. Even though I was never lecturing my kids on abstinence, the combination of general social standards, teen psychology, and my own ambivalence taught them that sex was something to be ashamed of, hidden, done furtively if at all. That’s not what I meant, but I’m pretty sure it’s what they heard. I don’t know why that’s a good system. I can’t really defend it, except to say it’s what my parents did, so I kind of fell into doing it, too.</p>
<p>So . . . apart from religious convictions – which I acknowledge is paramount for some of us, and makes my whole line of thought irrelevant and/or offensive – why is it such a great idea to communicate to our kids constantly that we want them to hide and to deny their sexuality? That it’s something that can’t be integrated honestly into family life? That sneaking around and dishonesty is “part of the fun”? That “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a morally defensible position?</p>
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<p>I tried to make an effort, when my kids were growing up, to talk about sex as if it’s the most natural thing in the world (which it is).</p>
<p>This embarrassed the living daylights out of my kids.</p>
<p>Having grown up with Hippie parents, I can promise you that having your parents constantly proclaiming the joy of sex and the beauty of sex and the blah, blah, blah, is just as intrusive, if not more so, than just having parents who matter of factly assist you with getting birth control and then answer questions, as they are asked.</p>
<p>There is this whole utopian ideal about “being open” about sex with our kids. But, we don’t have any business in our kids sex lives, except if they ask us something, and they aren’t going to ask us the stuff they aren’t ready to know.</p>
<p>I can promise you my hippie parents would have been fine with my boyfriend spending the night in my room, but all I wanted was for them to get out of my life. these types of “cool parents” are no less annoying, though i know they believe they are, than parents who make too many rules. Boundaries matter. We don’t develop our sexuality with the “help” of our parents. I’m sorry. It’s really inappropriate.</p>
<p>Your parents are uncool no matter how cool they are.</p>
<p>I think the key here is not so much to be open about sex per se, but to be open to talking to your kids about what matters to them. Sex will be one topic.</p>
<p>Poetgirl makes a good point about one extreme. Anybody ever read the novel “Endless Love”?</p>
<p>Hunt-- agreed… that is the “healthy” way to parent.</p>
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<p>I don’t know. I certainly don’t think sex is something to be ashamed of, hidden, or done furtively … but that also doesn’t mean that you go to town on the family room sofa with your boyfriend while the rest of the family watches TV, either. </p>
<p>I think high schoolers should spend their time in reasonably public areas of the house where anyone can interrupt at any time. They can make out in the finished basement and await footsteps from above at any point – sort of the equivalent of “we had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow.”</p>
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That was part of the thrill–even if you weren’t doing anything that they would have disapproved of. It would just have been awkward if they came down and caught you in the clinch.</p>
<p>“ickiness”??? yikes - </p>
<p>We have always told the kids that sex should be fun and lovely, only with both consenting, and really rather with someone they know well&long enough to feel attracted on multiple fronts that just sex.
I don’t know and didn’t need to know if they were having sex in her bedroom right then and there - I know D told me she was ready for it and wanted birth control - which I had her go to the gynecologyst for - did advice to use the double protection method. We are lucky to have far removed bedrooms. Never met him at breakfast.<br>
Now she’s out of the house, university in another town, boyfriend sleeps over - but we do not really get to meet him.</p>
<p>but never icky - not really healthy to consider sex icky and teach that to your children -</p>
<p>No one would suggest that anyone “go to town on the family room sofa while the rest of the family watches TV”.</p>
<p>But why, exactly, other than tradition, should they “await footsteps from above at any point”? Why do we act, and they act, like they are doing something wrong, and we are trying to stop them? When they aren’t really doing something wrong, and in many cases we’re not actually trying to stop them?</p>
<p>I’m not proposing a hippie agenda here, and I understand boundaries. I just think this is a massively weird and hypocritical aspect of the lives of many families, including mine, that gets taken for granted rather than thought about. </p>
<p>In my case, I DID have to walk to school in the snow for years, and either direction involved a long hill up (and an equally long one down). It didn’t actually build character, and as an adult I didn’t expend any effort to make my kids walk to school in the snow rather than take the bus. Not to mention that where my kids lived had a lot less snow than where I grew up. It would be dumb to argue that my kids missed something important developmentally by not walking more in the snow. Why do we act as though it’s developmentally necessary for them to fear detection while doing sex play?</p>
<p>JHS, I don’t think we jumped apart when we heard footsteps because we thought the parents would disapprove that we were making out. They certainly knew we were making out, and we knew they knew. But we wanted privacy. We didn’t want them listening in on our conversations, either, even if they were completely innocuous.</p>
<p>There is a spectrum, of course, between making out and having sex, and my parents, at least, would have started seriously disapproving at some point on that spectrum. But I didn’t want them seeing any of it.</p>
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<p>I think it’s precisely because sexuality is private. I mean, no one thinks it’s morally wrong or is horribly surprised or anything to find out that my husband and I have sex, but we don’t make a point of making the fact that we are (or are intending to) be part of the fabric of overall conversation / life. If we were visiting relatives, for example, we wouldn’t just go upstairs for a mid-afternoon quickie while other people were around. Not because it’s “wrong” but because other people simply don’t need to know the particulars. Likewise, I wouldn’t expect my college age students to disappear in front of me in an obvious fashion like that if we were all sitting around the house and doing whatever. I suppose it is duplicitous in a way, but there’s discretion too. And I think discretion isn’t necessarily always “because it’s icky, shameful and should be hidden” but just because private things are … well, private. I recognize that I’m not articulating this particularly well.</p>
<p>^^^I think what adults do, is say they are going to take a nap.</p>
<p>Yeah, well, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I’m not going to just disappear with my husband to “take a nap” when there are other people around. Maybe I’m just a prude.</p>
<p>I think HS teens are too young to have sex anywhere. Of course I know that HS kids ( not all) do have sex, but I don’t condone it.</p>
<p>D is in college and when her bf visits he stays in the guest room in the basement and she stays in her own room on the second floor. What happens in her room at college or his apartment stays there.</p>
<p>Just want in on this thread :)</p>
<p>I don’t think my parents should be allowed to have sex in my house. They’re too old.</p>
<p>My sister had the talk with my nephew when he was 10(maybe younger). He said, “oh, gross, you and Dad did it twice?” (two kids)</p>