so what age should a child date and how do you know when they're ready for that
that question really can't be answered unless you know the answer to two other questions
those are what is the goal of dating and when is your child ready to meet that goal so i can only
tell you what we did with our children what we learned after having nine children and hopefully
that will help you we were a family that read this book i kissed dating good goodbye by josh harris
and we also read some other books but i want to kind of go through what we thought was good in the
things that we learned and things that we thought weren't so good what i will say is one thing that
was good is i appreciated the concepts in the book but i did not think that the applications worked
very well and unfortunately a lot of people have taken the fact that the applications didn't work
well and so they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater and that would include josh harris the
author himself he even threw out christianity which is pretty disturbing but just because
somebody does that doesn't mean the concepts were bad in the first place and so i want to go over
the concepts not just that we're in the book but just the things that we learned generally
through the process of raising our nine children and hopefully those things will
help you with this question about when dating is appropriate for your children
so i'm basically going to talk about six points that i believe are concepts that if you teach your
children you probably will have a good outcome especially if they take them to mind and heart
number one is teach maturity one of the things that we wanted our children to know whether it be
about dating or any other decisions that they're making their lives is the concept of maturity
we define maturity as understanding how your present decisions will affect your distant future
and acting on that knowledge in a responsible way so we wanted them to think about what they
do right now what's that going to mean for their future and we want them to kind of have a mindset
of thinking that way number two think with your mind and not with your heart
something that i know really worked well and we wanted our children to
also do no matter what it was about whether it be about dating or other things is to recognize
not to allow your emotions to rule your life we wanted to instill the concept that you don't
follow your heart which the world tends to push at this point because as the scriptures say the heart
is deceitful above all things so you don't want to follow something that's deceitful instead we
wanted them to use their wisdom and their mind and think through things logically and think through
things with wisdom before they make decisions one thing we definitely tried to teach was never
make a big life decision while in a state of high emotion number three understand that relationships
always move another concept that worked well was to explain how relationships never stay stagnant
they either move closer together or further apart and this happens from moment to moment
as well as over time and if you think about it it happens with all relationships and that includes
romantic relationships so if you think about the relationship between a parent and child say
the more close you get it's because you're having more intimate conversations and the more of that
you do the closer you become and that's moment to moment over time as well as the more arguments
you have or the more things you disagree on the further and further apart you become that happens
with all relationships including romantic ones so we wanted them to have the concept of maturity
understanding how your present decisions will affect your distant future and acting on that
knowledge in a responsible way along with the understanding that relationships always move
so then if they think about that when they start that relationship they can think right away where
is this relationship going to go and if you think about it with a boyfriend girlfriend relationship
there's only two options for that relationship to end up they're either going to break up or they're
going to get married so thinking about that when they're 12 13 or 14 years old 15 years old
their relationship is going to keep moving and is it going to move towards marriage are
you ready to say that this person might be somebody that you're going to marry
or are you ready to say i'm going to break up with that person eventually then what's the point
of all the drama that's going to go on in their life thinking about it logically it doesn't seem
to make sense to do that too early then we want to talk about number four understand how sexual
relationships develop knowing that relationships always move and then thinking about maturity
if i start a relationship now where's it going to be in a month a year two years five years from now
if you start at 12 13 or 14 one year from now it's going to be tops 15 or 16 years old
and if that relationship is always moving where is it going to move to is it going to move to break
up or is it going to move to get married and if it's going to move to get married are you ready
to get married at 15 16 17 years old probably not do you want to break up with the person
not necessarily because that always caused a lot of drama so think about it logically
doesn't seem to make sense so far in the logic that we've talked about to get involved in
romantic relationships at 12 13 14 15 16 years old but when we're talking about understanding
how sexual relationships develop that's one thing that's different between a boyfriend or girlfriend
relationship versus the other relationships you have because the boyfriend or girlfriend
relationship is the relationship that would be romantic and that that would start moving
physically remember relationships always move so it's going to move forward physically that's not
true with your friend that's not true with your mom or dad or your siblings or your teacher or
other relationships that you have if those are appropriate relationships there's not going to
be a forward going with a physical relationship that only happens in romantic relationships so
generally teens aren't ready to move forward in a physical relationship and not only the physical
aspects of it but also the emotional aspects of a sexual relationship because eventually
it's going to move into a sexual relationship if it keeps moving forward that's just a matter of
logic that's just a matter of human nature now that's not to say some children can't
go out and date at 15 16 years old and not become sexually active before they're 18 or 19 years old
but generally what that would mean is they keep having relationships and breakups relationships
and breakups relationships and breakups sometimes they do have sexual relationships in that too
but if they don't they're either going to probably break up or they're going to continue forward with
that physical relationship and so that's why a lot of times you're going to see middle school
especially or high school there's just a lot of drama that goes on with romantic relationships
so now going back to thinking again about our first couple concepts was maturity and
with understanding how relationships move and now understanding how the sexual relationship develops
does it really make sense to get into dating relationships when you're
that young not really doesn't seem to to me so then if a young person isn't
getting involved in a romantic relationship we would move to number five use youth wisely
something that's really good to explain to your kids what we explained to our children
was that youth is a very unique time in your life most of your life you won't be a youth
most of your life you're going to be an adult you're going to be an older person the only time
that you have where you're not bogged down and burdened with adult responsibilities is during
your youth when you are under 18 years old when you don't have to pay your mortgage when you don't
have to necessarily have a full-time job you don't have to support yourself yet you can use that
time in a unique way that you can't use it later it's not going to be the same there are certain
freedoms that come with adulthood but there are other freedoms that come with being a child
some of those freedoms are that you can use that time to develop friendships advance your education
and find ways to serve others without the burdens of having to have those adult responsibilities
so since you have that freedom at this point and since relationships always move what would be the
point of trying to put romantic relationships and the burden of all of the emotions and all
that good that go with it why put that into your youth when you're not really ready to handle it
emotionally and physically and when it's going to cause a lot of drama wouldn't it be wiser
thinking maturely thinking of maturity wouldn't it be wiser to put that off until you're older
it seems to me that it would and that's why we taught that to our children
that's better left for when you're an adult any of our children who decided to go with our guidelines
we didn't have that issue as they were growing up they didn't start dating until they were adults
and as adults they already have that maturity that they need to make those wise decisions
now that doesn't mean that everything went perfectly and all things were always well we made
mistakes and they made mistakes here and there and that always happens so let's look at those
first two questions what's the goal of dating and when is my child ready to meet that goal
and that would be number six the goal of dating in our family we wanted their goal to be to find
someone who has the character that would make a good marriage partner and the purpose of that date
is to learn the character of that person and to see whether or not marriage might be in the future
so what that would mean is we don't want them to go out with somebody just because they're
they look good or they're good looking or whatever we want them to go out with somebody that they are
attracted to of course but that has a character that would make a good marriage partner
and if you think of it most teens barely are able to conceive of all of these things in a mature way
but certainly not until they're late high school or in college or or beyond high school anyway
so in other words after we thought about all this logic what we decided was
it was best to tell our children that it's wise to wait till adulthood and before that
it wasn't in their best interest and would likely lead to a lot of unnecessary drama
so far that worked well for us the three children so far that we have that have married have chosen
really good marriage partners that have good character and we're really happy with that
and we have six more to go if they all get married and we hope that they will do the same so the end
result here in my view is the goal of dating is to find someone to marry and it isn't reasonable to
start that process until you're within a year or two of actually making the commitment of marriage
so if you're younger than that it's probably not a wise time in their life to get into that
i know that isn't the normal thing a lot of people are saying day earlier not wise in my view
i hope this video has given you something to think about something to talk with your
husband or wife about something to talk with your children about so that you can make a wise
decision for your own family and i hope that if you liked it you will hit the like button
and subscribe and i hope to see you here next week parents you can do this thanks for watching
you