I kid you not! Last year I had students at the end of the year who said they were boyfriend/girlfriend. This year it has started much sooner. Today I intercepted a note....the boy was asking his "girlfriend" if he was a good kisser. OMG! These kids are like, 11 years old! I asked another teacher for advice, and she pulled the two aside and had a talk with them....they signed a "contract" promising to slow down and spend more time with their same-sex friends. Last year my kids thought "going out" meant sitting together on the bus and calling each other. Why do they think they need to grow up so fast?
Two reasons. 1) Media 2) Peer pressure Unfortunately, my kids are third graders and they already kid each other about it. Some of the more mature kids (loosely using that word) will say that they are going out but barely talk.
I teach HS juniors and seniors. I'll hear a student say, "oh, I used to date him." If I comment like, "I never knew you two were a couple." The response is, "it was like in 3rd grade." So, my HS students consider ex boyfriends/girlfriends all the way back to elementary school. Very strange.
Oh, certainly no surprise here. But I don't like it one bit. I had drama just a few days ago because one of my sixth grade boys told two girls in one week those three little words: I love you. The claws came out!
My 4th graders talk about stuff like this. Some are "dating". The girls fight over boys. It is aggravating!
It's been almost 40 years since I was in 6th grade and we all were "going with" a boy. It meant that when we got in line to go somewhere, we tried to be together. In tag at recess, we would unfreeze our "boyfriend" and we might try to pass a note. It was all talk and no action! Now, today there may be more action than there was back in the day, but it's not like boyfriend/girlfriends in 6th grade is anything new. I wouldn't worry about it.
It's beyond me why parents allow their kids to date so darn early. That's why there's so much teen pregnancy because they've already been dating a couple yrs & are barely in 9th grade (or younger), so these kids always feel the need to take it to the next level. Speaking of this, I also read that an alarmingly high rate of very young people have oral sex because they want to do something sexually, but they don't want to get pregnant or have to deal w/ birth control. I was brought up in church PLUS have strict parents. I still believe in not having sex before marriage. My religion sees oral sex & ma$turbation as wrong. My parents wouldn't let me date until I graduated from HS. But they did allow me to go to my senior prom.
Or more likely, the parents are the role-model for the behavior. I would give a bit more credence to the media notion: with all this inane Kardashian, Paris Hilton stuff (honestly, WHO THE AFT CARES ABOUT WHAT KIM KARDASHIAN'S LIFE OR PARIS HILTON'S LIFE). These things bombarding kids is a factor--and the fact that the parents who should be correcting this notion (that all that is real life) are the ones who condone it with their own behavior. It's a vicious cycle.
We include concepts of social changes and dating during our adolescent changes/ sex ed talk beginning in fourth and fifth grade and continuing in more detail through middle school. Basically we say to them that it is perfectly fine to have feelings and interest in other people. We tell them that these feelings often develop and evolve as they grow older, and that in later years they are more prepared to be in more singular relationships, but for now they really should continue to build a variety of friendships. I'd encourage you try to suspend judgment, talk openly with them about what they might be feeling and thinking, and share your thoughts about expectations now and when they get older. Taking the mystery and suspense out of relationships also helps to make dating far less interesting to the kids.
It's nothing new to me. We started with kissing games in grade 2 or 3, and we had "boyfriends and girlfriends" in grade 4 or 5. Generally speaking there wasn't much real action until at least grade 6 and in most cases it wasn't physical at all until high school. That was back in the 1980s.
I subbed for four days in a third grade class two of the students were "dating" actually dating. The parents had mixed gender sleepovers with the two kids and their friends. When I was in elementary school some kids did start date-dating in middle school, many ended up pregnant by seventh to ninth grade.
We had all kinds of drama in a 4th grade class b-c one girl took another girl's man. In a fifth grade class a teacher intercepted a note that asked a girl which she liked...and it was a drawing of a boy's parts (very graphic). I was beyond shocked when I saw it. I've never received a note like that and I'm 33. I can't imagine what goes on in the homes & on the streets when adults aren't around.
I have taught 5th grade long enough to know that the boyfriend/girlfriend thing happens all year long! It is very frustrating. One day, I was so upset I called both sets of parents and told them that I couldn't teach because of "so and so" flirting with each other! Oh yeah, don't assume all parents know! The parents I called were livid!!!!
You wanna know how I found out my 10 year old son had a girlfriend? He accidentally left up a facebook picture of her. I didn't even know he had an account. Then a day later he was using my phone texting her and saying how much she loves her, etc. Puppy love would have been cute but his language was not. No I was not aware. It still scares me a little bit. They are KIDS.
I had a boyfriend at the end of 5th grade and we did do bf/gf type stuff that went beyond kissing. I believe I was 11 and he was 12, so it would be around 1990/1991 He wanted to go all the way. I declined but at the time I also thought you got pregnant from everytime you went all the way, so who knows what I would have said if I had known the truth at the time. I know by 7th grade many of the girls had 9th and 10th grade "boyfriends" (our high school was 7-12 and all grades shared lunch periods, study halls, and the odd class) And this was a clean, wholesome small town school. I can only imagine what it must have been like in the city schools - and by city I mean schools that have more than 80 kids per grade and have to deal with any level of crime. We never even locked our house doors
I'm thinking Maryhf may be the only one who remembers what that age was like. My elementary school was a lot less puritanical than my sons' (not that there was much more than talk, but we weren't all that naive).
It absolutely is my business as a teacher if one of my students is seriously dating at 10 or 11 years old. I don't care how emotionally mature you are. It's not appropriate for your age. Period. And as a major adult presence in your life it is absolutely my business to get your parents involved so you are making appropriate decisions. Having a mature singular relationship with a person that you are sexually attracted to isn't appropriate for your age. I teach 6-8 and I have some 7th grade boys who are 'dating' 8th grade girls, but that means that they go out to the trampoline park with a bunch of their friends and they dance together at the dance. I have heard some rumblings with 6th graders 'dating' but again, nothing like you describe. There's a big difference between the OP's dating and the typical elementary school 'dating'.
Wow, my high school must have been prurient! We had one girl get pregnant junior year and she was ostracized by everybody. I remember a cheerleader walking up to her and spitting on her. I don't know anyone who dated before middle-school when I was in school--although we did chase the boys to try to catch them and kiss them in 3rd grade--so I guess that counts. Girls who slept around were sluts. I went to a large public high school in Southern California. I graduated in 1992.
Same with me and I graduated in 1994. I think there were 3 pregnant girls in high school that I noticed but it was a school of over 1200 students so I might not have know of others. Nobody seemed to date in middle school unless it was just holding hands in the hallway. We lived in an area where you had to drive to get anywhere. Not like students could go on dates just walking to their destination in most cases so I think they mostly waited until they had their license to date.
I'd believe it. At my old school I heard one of the 6th grade girls was giving oral sex to an 8th grade boy before I was a teacher there. One of my students this year confessed that she got seriously grounded for giving oral to her "boyfriend" in the bathroom. Not to mention the sexting with real nude photos that's definitely going on underneath everyone's noses. Kids these days are way too curious about sex mostly because of the media and peer pressure, plus a lot of them get it from their parents behavior at home.
I have to count on two hands the conversations I've had this year about sexual behavior with my 2nd graders. I think--and hope--most of the kids don't understand it, but the stuff that these kids seem to see so liberally is awful. One of my teammates has a student who is one seriously messed up boy because his dad would force the kids to watch violent pornography. On a lighter version of the story, last year I had a kiddo move states. On his last day, he, all of seven years old, confessed his deep and undying love for another little girl, who was properly "eeww!"ed. My TA and I laughed because he thought he was taking the opportunity to say it while he could and then never have to see her again. Well... Dad finished his business in the other state and they moved back... he's now in the same class as this little girl. Poor kiddo.
I wouldn't be teaching 12-14 year old "parents" if sex/dating was less of an issue. Some of it is cultural acceptance, some of it is stupidity, some is poor parent role models, some of it comes from status as being either the baby daddy or baby mommy. It breaks my heart when preteens talk about wanting to have a baby, and then watching these same children act out on their misbegotten desire. How a 12 year old girl or boy can be parents when they don't even know what it means to be responsible for another life is a wonder to me. Babies having babies seems the norms in some cultures, especially when there is a lack of parental role models for them to learn from. I'm a science teacher, and the act of procreating is ranked right up there with the need to eat. Is it the teacher's responsibility to keep students from harm? Yes, even when the student is looking the danger in the face and don't even know it. Can we totally police the actions and mindsets? Not from what I have seen. I find it a sad truth that you can lead the horse to water and even explain why that water is good for them, but you can't make them believe your words or drink the water.
In my district, kids talk like this in first and second grade. They're imitating their parents, as many are single and dating. Some of the kids are sexually active between grades 3-5. We've had fifth grade girls sending nude pictures to boys. Then they are then having babies in middle school. Abject poverty breeds a special kind of Hell on earth.
It is hell on earth and it is much too pervasive. There is no more preteen and teenage segments of growing up. Kids think they should be adults when they are still kids so they lose out on a huge developmental stage. They see it everywhere around them, sometimes in their own families. Certainly on media. Limits are so unpopular that even formerly respected public figures are immune to them. Sick, sick, sick.
