HICKS: Parents blind to teen sex

“So, how’s your girlfriend?” I ask my son out of the blue. “Which one?” he says with a devious smile.

“The new one,” I say.

“Oh, her.” He shrugs. We both smile.

And that’s the end of our update on Jimmy’s dating life.

It’s all a joke, of course. Jimmy doesn’t have a dating life. The “girlfriend thing” remains awkward (his word) and unnecessary (my word).

Instead, we encourage our 14-year-old son to have a host of friends - girls as well as guys - and to forget about dating until the time is right. (That would be a time when he has his own money and a driver’s license.)

The fact that we discourage exclusive, romantic relationships for our tween and young teenage children - and that we monitor their behavior to assure they aren’t dating behind our backs - puts my husband and me outside the parenting norm. (What else is new?)

We believe in the concept of “late blooming” as far as dating goes, based on the theory that childhood is too short to spend your time worrying, for example, about whether your 13-year-old girlfriend has seen you talking at your locker to another person who just happens to be - gasp! - a female.

So while some 14-year-old boys must attend to the emotional whims of their romantic partners, my son must concern himself only with important things, such as how the Yankees are doing and how long he must wait until I feed him again.

It turns out our values about late blooming and our strong stand against exclusive relationships for tweens and young teens also may be a way to reduce our children’s risk for physical and emotional abuse.

A recent study commissioned by Liz Claiborne Inc. and loveisrespect.org, the nonprofit group that operates the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline, reveals three disturbing trends: tweens and teens are being abused in relationships at alarming rates; they don’t know the warning signs of abuse; and worst of all, many parents are completely clueless about their children’s relationships.

Here are the survey’s major findings from the summary prepared by Teenage Research Unlimited (February 2008):

— Dating relationships start younger than realized: Nearly half of 11- to 14-year-olds have been in a dating relationship.

— Sex is considered part of tween dating relationships by a surprising number of tweens and parents - though parents believe it is not their tweens who are having sex.

— Significant levels of abusive behavior are reported in tween dating relationships, and teens report that abusive behavior increases dramatically in the teen years (15-18).

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