My first disclaimer - The pictures in this blog may not represent actual couples. They were selected because they had a male and female in the same shot and represented the topic of today's blog.
My youngest child is a 14-year-old daughter.
Needless to say, we have rules that govern her social life –
no dating, no kissing, no hugging, no slow dancing, no eye-gazing, no flirty
smiling, no texting, no calling, no emailing, no skyping, no IMing, no
Twittering, no Facebook-friending, no visiting and no eating at the lunch table
- with boys. Ever.
She cooperated nicely with our rules for a minute. Earlier,
she had decided that she didn’t ever want to get married, and she was never
having children because she wanted to be the best aunt in the world. Apparently, in order to be the best aunt,
her attention couldn’t be divided by husbands and kids so she eliminated them
from her future.
My husband and I liked that plan. We thought it might get us
safely through her teenage years.
But then a “really, really cute guy” came into the picture,
and there was eye-gazing and a lot of
texting. Their school-hallway relationship lasted less than two weeks.
Then another “really, really cute guy” came into the
picture, and there was more eye-gazing and endless texting. This guy even
bought her Lucky Charms and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for Valentine’s Day,
but he only made it half-way through Day 3 of the relationship. The silly kid
was texting another girl, and my daughter broke up with him for “cheating.”
Recently, she came home from school and made the
announcement that she was “dating.”
I asked, “Does he
drive?”
“Mommmmm, no! He’s
only 14!”
“Well, then how are you ‘dating?’”
I still haven’t gotten an answer from her – I guess it’s a
pretty dumb question to a teenager – but I’ve figured it out on my own.
Fourteen-year-old “dating” is nothing but exclusive texting at 9:00pm and
changing your Facebook status to “in a relationship.”
Now that we’ve reached this stage of life, we had to make
some real rules – real rules that had valid reasons behind them that she could understand. Rules
that made her think, ‘I may not like
these right now, but my parents love me, and they’re for my own good.’ We
stated our expectations clearly and plan to give her all the help she needs so
she can be successful in following our rules and focusing on the things that
really matter at this time of her life – like school.
Shepherds College does much the same thing for our students.
Our Student Handbook states, “An important part of any individual’s development and pursuit of
independence is the ability to develop healthy relationships, including
relationships with members of the opposite sex. In an effort to encourage
healthy male-female relationships and promote social development outside the
realm of dating, we established a dating policy that intentionally seeks to
prevent unhealthy interactions between any pair of students.”
To this end, we’ve set sexual purity/dating standards and
hold each student to them:
1.
Respect personal boundaries. Avoid unnecessary
physical contact, and don’t reveal all your thoughts and feelings.
2.
Resist temptation by maintaining control of
yourself physically and mentally. Carefully manage your thought life.
3.
Refrain from being alone with a student of the
opposite sex, and avoid becoming emotionally consumed with one particular
person.
4.
All interactions that are sexually oriented need
to be avoided.
5.
You will be held accountable for your behavior
and will be subject to consequences should you choose not to follow the rules.
Mrs. Kolkman, as the instructor in Personal Development 1,
is now giving the first-year students tools to help them through the next three
years of relationships and, hopefully, her teaching will guide them through the
years of relationships to follow their time at Shepherds College.
Her class is studying Love.
“By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought
to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and
sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love
abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and
in truth.” ~ 1 John 3:16-18
They’re discussing three different types of Love:
Agape – the unconditional love God
shows to us, and that He makes possible for us to show in return through the
indwelling of His Holy Spirit.
Philos – the affectionate love of
friends or the sentimental love of an object
Eros – the love reserved for a
married couple
 |
| Mr. & Mrs. Kolkman |
Because it’s so easy to confuse the different types of love,
Mrs. Kolkman chose to illustrate them by showing clips from several movies: Mean Girls, Juno and The Passion of the
Christ. Based on the clips shown, it turned out that true love was only
demonstrated in one of the movies! Now the students are watching the movie Fireproof and will start talking about
the differences between men and women. The tough topic of abuse will also be
covered.
The students have already defined love and talked through
the dating policy I summarized above.
They also had a heart-to-heart about important issues in
dating, like integrity, discernment with our relationships, purity not only in
body but in spirit, and why there needs to be rules.
Mrs. Kolkman brought in a mousetrap to demonstrate
temptation and how it can lead us into sin, or being trapped, just like the
little mouse who only wanted a bit of cheese…
The rules help us set boundaries so we can maintain our
integrity and purity, and they help us use discernment when we’re faced with
choices.
It’s our love of the students that determined our rules in
the first place. We want what’s best for them in their education, in their relationships,
and throughout their appropriately independent lives.
Isn’t that what love is all about?
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” ~ John 3:16
Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.
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