Yesterday our teenage daughter received a ‘love’ note from a boy at her middle school, which reads:
“(Addressing her first name), I love you. You are so cute. Your secret admirer”
She said the other day another boy even came to her asking her out.
At our family dinner table this became our main subject of the evening. We all said it was good for her, half joking and half congratulating. For a girl who wants to be popular at school that might be truly a wanted thing, but not for our daughter. Obviously she doesn’t like those ‘admirers’ showing their fondness or affection at all. She felt very disturbed and she even said she hated those boys! Her reasoning? She added, "Friendship could last forever, well, kind of, but love only come and go".
It all sounds familiar to me in our generation, except they are at a much younger age. The boys started to develop those whatever feelings but didn’t know how to show them, while the girls didn’t know how to respond.
Having understood more now on how she felt, I started to talk to her in a boy’s perspective. When a boy starts to have affection for a girl, he would feel difficult to keep it to himself, until it is completely gone. I said I was one of those boys back in my old time so I know how they would feel. I tried to convince her that her way of handling would well affect a boy’s life, and probably hers too, so she better treat them as gracefully and maturely as possible and give herself and those boys a change to learn and grow. For example, if she feels uncomfortable hanging out with the boy alone, she always can go out with him in a group.
