15 yr old daughter having sex! Please Help!

Dear Debwahm,

Welcome to our corner of the village.

I make the assumption that “lover boy” is the same age as your DD and this is his first time also. 

A word of defense for the guys, from the mother of daughters:  I think in many cases the girls are coconspirators and in some they are the main catalyst for the SA—especially with the younger males, but I could be totally mistaken.   

Two things I notice from your posting are that you have an open relationship with your DD that allows you to have conversations with her.  This is good.  You also recognize that teen brains are not fully developed and that is a true concern.  This is a fact that I worry about with our situation.

This is a short recitation of where I come from on this subject:

Hubby and I have two daughters who are now 19 ½ and 20 ½, with SILs the same age.  Around Halloween, when they were in 7th and 8th grades, oldest SIL took a liking to oldest daughter and needed to find a place to park his best friend and that place was with our youngest daughter.  Over the next two and a half years of hanging together, which meant dances, movies, malls, six flags, hurricane harbor waterpark, going on vacations with all three sets of parents, together they had a mowing service business; they also merged finances, education objectives, and life goals.  Also, unknown to the three sets of parents, they had made formal vows to each other the summer they were 14 ½ and 15 ½; vows significant enough to them that the dates of those vows are engraved inside their gold wedding bands.   They count time from those vow dates.  And no, I don’t think this is a good idea, but it is a fact.

We had no clue that the guys who took our DDs to that Halloween dance would be SILs.   

They were 15 ½ and 16 ½, having hung around/dated for 2 ½ years, when I came home from work early one afternoon and discovered both couples were in bed.  I didn’t directly see it happening, but it was apparent that it was happening and I went to the living area and waited until they came out and they had the “dear in the headlights” guilty look.   At the time, both girls had been on birth control for several years to regulate periods.   They had checked with Planned Parenthood to be sure that they were using it correctly for birth control. 

A year later both couples started talking about “going all the way,” which to them meant marriage.  We were planning the weddings when the youngest couple “oopsed” on the birth control and became parents of our first grandson seven months after the wedding.  He will be 2 next month and last May they blessed us again with a second grandson.  Older daughter has fertility issues, which may mean they will build their family with adoption—a blessing of a different type. 

We truly feel blessed to live with the young couples and grandsons, with the guys working part time while all four attend classes together four evenings a week.  The parents of the couples contribute financially what they would have, if they had remained single, and watch the grandsons while the couples attend classes. It works for us. 

The couples are thirty months into marriage and things are looking good, but I DO worry about those out years.  Worry is a big part of being a parent.  The Challenger shuttle liftoff looked good for the first 67 seconds. 

Some thoughts on your situation:

I don’t think you can take care of teenage SA with grounding or denial of privileges or even beating them with a cat of nine tails.    

The average age for first time sex is 16 and the most likely spot is at one of their homes, usually sometime between when school lets out and the parents get home from work.  As Musiclover said above, once they become active it is very likely NOT to stop.  I think most parents come to some type of accommodation on the subject.  For some it’s don’t ask, don’t tell, for some it’s do it before I get home, other’s say anywhere but my house, some let it happen at home.  Every household has to figure this out. 

You are not giving your consent, approval, or blessing for your DD to have sex by putting her on the pill, but rather you are trying to keep her and the boy from having to face abortion, adopting out, single parenting, a forced marriage, etcetera.  None are good choices to have to make when they can and should be avoided with birth control.  While you’re at it, get her the hepatitis shot and the HPV Gardasil shots.  If, GOD FORBID, she were to be a rape victim, you would want her to have protection from these issues.   When they come up with a shot for HIV, I’ll pay to give it to both daughters, SILs, and all grandchildren.   

As Bunnyrose, who posts here, well stated several months ago, there is something worse than having a 15 year old DD on birth control and that is having a pregnant 15 year old DD.  Sexually active (SA) women should be on birth control, whether they are 15 or 50, unless they want to get pregnant.   FWIW, our OBgyn says that in the real world the pill has a failure rate of about 10% per year and hope, as in I hope I don’t get pregnant, has an 85% per year failure rate.  Condoms have a failure rate above 25%.  If your daughter is SA, do you want her using the method with a 10%, 25%, or the 85% failure rate? 

After we discovered the kids were SA, we made the guys tell their parents and we made the couples discuss what “they” were going to do “when” DD got preggers.    It’s a “they” question and a “when” issue. This is a discussion you can have with your DD and lover boy. Being a parent is forever and forever is a really long time.  Are you in for the long haul, lover boy?   You see, lover boy, I don’t want my grandchild to never know or hardly know the father.  Does that make sense to you, lover boy?   

By the way lover boy, if the girl changes her mind on abortion, you have no say in the matter.  It’s just tough toenails for you and your choice.  I knew the heart of our daughters and their guys and I knew it was pro-life. 

Another question I asked each of the four was where do you see yourself 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50 years from now.  All four answered, married and happy with their only squeeze.  What did you say about undeveloped teen brains?  LOL

The reason that we six parents could talk to all four of the kids was that we were all emotionally invested in each other.  If this guy is the guy, you want to be emotionally invested with each other. 

Keeping the conversation going is better than going to blows over the subject.  You will not win this argument.  Fighting the romance may keep them together just to spite the parents.  If or when it falls apart, you want to have a good enough relationship with your DD that she feels comfortable discussing things with you. You want to be there to help her pick up the pieces and put things back together and you want to be there to help guide her to making better choices in the future.

I hope this ramble by me is of some value to you and yours.

Kimmy

You know, Kimmybabe, considering the family support that your kids are getting from you & their in-laws, I do see that they have a much higher chance of their young marriages succeeding compared to kids who really had to strike out on their own and might have added problems of not having enough money, help w/ their kids, etc.--same for Bunnierose's DD.  Most of my high school sweetheart friends did wait until after they graduated from college to actually get married.

I know you are angry at the boy but hatred?  I know it's common for moms of girls to see their girls as the innocent little angels and boys as the evil others, but as a mom of both, I can tell you that girls are just as agressive if not worse.  The one you should be mad at is your DD for lying & disobeying you.  Hopefully by the time grandma comes around you will have calmed down enough to have him meet GM unless you want to discuss what they have been up to or just say that you're punishing your DD right now by not allowing your DD to have him over--you know how nosy your mother is more than I do.

A few more thoughts for your consideration:

As you somewhat alluded to in your first post, teens have all the equipment and hormones for having sex without the developed brains and maturity to deal with all the complexities and consequences that come with it. 

Your daughter came to you to discuss the fact that she had had sex.  This is a huge and risky step for her to take.  Many teens, like mine, wait until they get caught or have a positive pregnancy test to deal with.  This “coming to you” can be viewed in many ways.  I would choose to view it as an opportunity to help guide her and the boy. 

Ok, DD you love each other and plan to get married after high school.  So, where do you plan to live and how do you plan to pay for it?  How do we get you to the point that education and life skills allow you two lovebirds to be a happy successful self-sustaining couple?    Do you think a college education for both of you might make life easier and better for you and my grandchildren?  How do we work that out?  What plans can we make?  Without sounding patronizing, what do you each want to be when you grow up?  (I was 22 when someone asked me that question in that way.  LOL)  How do we get you each there?  What can I do to help you and this boy reach these goals? The questions are endless. 

Your goal is to guide them to look long range and that is something that teens are generally not good at.  Five years is forever away to them.  We know it’s like day after tomorrow.

Include the guy in the conversations and invite his parents to join in as you have opportunity.  What you are discussing is the happiness of you, them, your daughter, their son, and the grandchildren you will share with them.

I’ve heard it said that absence makes the heart grow fonder, so I would not keep him away from visiting her.   I’d have the boy over for a chaperoned evening, every evening.  Watch TV with them, let them do homework at the kitchen table, chaperone the movies, go to the mall with them, make it a threesome at Costco for hot dogs and pizza.  If it is true love, it will survive this inconvenience.  Caution, you may discover what she sees in him.   You may even find that he really is a “good catch” and “husband material.”   And when necessary remind them that this is all because we discovered that they could not control themselves without chaperoning.     

As for grandmother’s visit, I would have a side conversation with your daughter and the BF about not bringing granny into the loop on this subject. If they caused the subject to come up, I’d be ready to deal with it.  I think his absence may raise more questions than keeping him away is worth, but I could be mistaken.     

And if they have an "oopse" along the way (pregnancy), I can tell you that they send you home with the most fabulous parting gift from the hospital delivery room.  You will fall in love with the little stranger long before you see the baby’s face that first time.  They complicate your life, the teen’s lives, but are worth it.  As Rose says, Sabrtooth and I agree, being a grandmother is the best gig in town.