Should Mom Pay for Daughter’s Blue Hair?

 Kim asks:

While home from college over winter break, my 20-year old daughter asked for $300 to get her hair highlighted blue.  My husband refused to pay for such a ridiculous expense. She then stormed out of the house spending most of her remaining break with friends.  We’ve paid for her hair styling in the past, but she usually didn’t spend more than $75.   

My husband and daughter have a history of conflict beginning two years ago when he took away her phone and car until she broke up with her boyfriend - who we both thought was a loser.  She broke up with him a month later right before she left for college. The relationship between my daughter and husband hasn’t been the same since. We pay her tuition and give her $400 a month spending money.  She uses this money to pay her rent which is $300 and to buy food.  She also has a credit card.  I’ve been paying her credit card bill each month which has been as high as $600 and am starting to resent it.  My husband thinks I’m spoiling her and that she needs to pay her card with her own money. I would like her to save her money for graduate school.

We also don’t like her new boyfriend, but I won’t let my husband force another break up.  She was so cold towards him the last time. I want my daughter to be successful and happy what should I do?

Should Kim pay for her daughter’s blue highlights?
I asked my own stylist if blue highlights were popular at her salon.  They are not, her salon doesn’t even stock blue dye. Blue highlights are expensive because it requires a two-step process that involves stripping the natural color from your hair then adding the blue color. She doesn’t recommend blue because it requires a lot of maintenance to keep blue looking good. Blue doesn’t hold up well on hair and may fade to an ugly green after only a few weeks.  She also thinks at twenty Kim’s daughter is an adult and needs to have adult hair – which is not blue.  If she wants to have a little fun with color, she recommends purchasing blue hair extensions instead.  The one below can be purchased here for $9.99.

What is really happening here?
You are both treating your daughter like a child and she is acting like one. Do you really think your husband forced you daughter to break up with her boyfriend?  I don’t.  I think she broke up with him because she wanted to.  If she didn’t want to break up with him she would have told you they broke up just to get her stuff back then continued to see him behind your back.   Check out this post where I answered a question on how to get your daughter to break up with a loser. (Short answer - you can’t.) I also think your daughter knows her frivolous spending irritates her dad which is why she asks for things like blue hair.

You and your husband need to stop playing good cop/bad cop in regards to money. It isn’t good for your relationship with your husband or your relationship with your daughter. I suggest the three of you sit down and go over your daughter’s fixed expenses.  I’m sure $400 is not enough to cover rent, food, utilities, gas and other miscellaneous school expenses. You and your husband need to agree on an amount you are both willing to give your daughter each month then you Kim can’t give her more after the fact. Be very clear how much you are giving her then let her know she will be responsible for the rest.  Instead of saying I’ll pay $75 for this, but I won’t pay for that, just give her $500 and let her manage her own money. I would be very surprised if her credit card spending does not go down once she has to dip into her own savings.

Do you require your children pay a portion of their expenses while in college? How did you determine how much to give them? Did you ever try to manipulate their decisions with money or stuff?

Note I am an Amazon affiliate.

 

Why I Will Never Be a Homesteader

I discovered Melissa Coleman's book This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undoneon Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness’s site when she included it in her Nonfiction Recommendation Engine: Memorable Memoirs. She describes this book as just stunning… ominous, elegant, honest and evocative and was able to read it in a single sitting. 

What is the This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone about?
In the fall of 1968 Melissa’s parents Elliot and Sue Coleman buy a small piece of property on a remote peninsula on the coast of Maine from Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of the homesteading bible Living the good Life how to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World.  Their dream is to build a home with their own hands then live off the land. They become part of the back-to-land movement of the 70’s. All does not go well and eventually their family becomes undone. Melissa’s memoir explores her early childhood growing up on the homestead while learning to better understand her past.
      
Motivation for reading:
I grew up on a dairy farm in rural western Wisconsin in the 70’s. When I graduated from high school my goal was to get as far away from the farm as possible. My husband on the other hand is an avid fly fisherman, loves the outdoors and dreams of owning a log home on a couple of acres in Wisconsin's driftless area in our retirement years. I thought reading this book might help me determine whether I was judging my former life too harshly.

My thoughts:
I was not disappointed with this book. Like Kim, I found it to be an engrossing read and would categorize it as a nonfiction book that reads like fiction. Coleman’s story reminded me of Jeanette Well’s book The Glass Castle especially in her ability to write about her parents without bitterness.

I was impressed with how the book accurately portrays the difficulties that come with living off the land:

The reality of this way of life is that you have got to keep at it even when you don’t feel like it. Otherwise you won’t make it. It’s no life for dabblers. You have to dig it wholeheartedly, for if you don’t you just simply won’t be happy nor successful at what you do. (Pg. 111)

Coleman also does an excellent job of describing how isolating this life can be. In an article featured in the New York Times covering the Coleman’s reporter Roy Reed wrote:

“Self-sufficiency proves too difficult for many. Marital stresses, for example, are exaggerated in isolated areas around the country.” (Pg. 205)

I was happy to see her mention the problems of living without health insurance. Many of the books I’ve read (both fiction and nonfiction) covering “dropping out” or “living off the land” fail to discuss medical insurance. Elliott Coleman develops Graves' disease despite his strict vegetarian diet. Lack of medical insurance delays treatment and his health and stamina continue to decline. An underlying fear develops - what happens if Elliot becomes too sick to work.

I came away with a better understanding of organic farming.
Elliot Coleman ultimately becomes an organic farming guru. Here is one of his early influences:

It wasn't until the second summer of 1970 that I really began to understand gardening. That was the summer I read Sir Albert’s classic, An Agricultural Testament,  in which Howard claims that if plants are healthy there is no role for insects. (Pg. 66)

I won’t reveal what happens, but will say I did shed a tear of two. 

Bottom Line:  
If you are interested in self-sufficiency or the homestead movement and enjoy a good story this book is for you.  It would also make a good selection for a nonfiction book club. My only criticism is Coleman’s use of the first person in writing about events and conversations that occurred before she was born and when she was very young. Plus, her thoughts are too advanced for her age. In addition, I would have preferred more analysis of her parent’s actions and a discussion of her life after she left the homestead. Perhaps she will write a sequel. 

As to my own recollections of the farming life – I believe they are accurate. I foresee myself visiting western Wisconsin for a vacation or two, but I will never again live there permanently.
  
Have you ever considered leaving the corporate world to live off the land?

 Please Note, I am an Amazon Affiliate

Why Women Opt-Out of Their Careers?

This month, The Savvy Reader Book Club, is discussing Debora L. Spar’s book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection. In an earlier post, I revealed a perfume commercial from the 70's was responsible for shaping my life’s vision. Last week, we had an interesting discussion on whether greater sexual freedom meant a loss of power for women. 

Today I am sharing the reasons Spar feels career women continue to crash in to ceilings.

Spar begins by siting Management Women and the New Facts of Life, an article Felice Schwartz wrote for the Harvard Business Review in 1989:

The article argued that if corporations wanted to hire their best and brightest female employees, they needed to create a more flexible and family friendly workforce, one that offered young mothers a variety of ways to structure their working hours and their careers. High potential career women, Schwartz suggested fell naturally into two camps. In the first were “career primary women,” women who essentially behaved like men at work and were willing to undertake the same set of trade-offs. These women were almost certain to remain single or at least childless, Schwartz predicted, and to demand only that their employers “recognize them early, accept them, and clear artificial barriers from their path to the top.” In the second camp were career and family women,” women who wanted children and a career, and who, unlike both men and “career primary women,” were willing to trade some of the demands of promotion for the freedom to spend more time with their children. (Pg. 182)

Schwartz’s piece went viral and the term mommy-track was coined. Unfortunately, the mommy-track did not work out in practice:

Few organizations have found ways to carve their most important positions into anything other than full-time chunks. Today for example, more than twenty years after Schwartz published her article, there are still only eight scientists working part time at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Only 13 percent of women lawyers work part time, as do 2 percent of the female financial managers. It doesn’t seem that the human resource departments of any of these organizations are consciously choosing against part-time positions. But when it comes to putting actual bodies in actual jobs, full-timers simply tend to dominate. As a result, while the number of women who work part time is statistically quite high (roughly a quarter of all female workers), the vast majority of these part-timers are clustered at the lower end of the economic spectrum, working as cashiers, waitresses and sales assistants. (Pg. 183)

I found this to be interesting, since just last week I asked our CFO if I could hire a part-time person for our department. His answer – I would prefer everyone work a few hours of overtime each week rather than add an additional staff person.

I was also reminded of the seminar I had attended on hiring discrimination. The seminar was given by the HR Director of a major corporation in my area. I learned many managers continue to “profile” and discriminate when making hiring decisions. They prefer not to hire married women for IT consulting positions that involve travel – she recommended ladies take off their wedding rings before going on those types of interviews. Also, they tend not to hire or promote women who are in their child bearing years.

Then there are the women who opt-out. I have several friends and co-workers whose experiences mirrored the following:

Many women who have left the full-time workforce, of course, predict that their hiatuses will be brief. As Sylvia Ann Hewlett found in a 2005 study, most women who pull blithely into a career “off-ramp” find the road back far more treacherous than they anticipated. Positions disappear; salaries plummet; professional relationships grow stale. And at the end of the day, only 40 percent of women who try to return to full-time professional jobs actually manage to do so. The rest settle into early retirement or slower paced, lower-ranked jobs. (Pg. 183)

Women simply jump first:

When the choice is between compromising a job and compromising a family, women seem more inclined to focus on the family, men to stick with the job that pays the bills.

Opting-out is particularly high for women who didn’t like their careers that much to begin with or entered them haphazardly:

This mismatch between jobs and desires seems to vary not only with time and gender, but across industries as well. Specifically, there are some fields from which women seem to flee in droves: law, consulting, banking. And some fields in which they stay: medicine, academia, entrepreneurial ventures. Typically, the reasons cited to explain these patterns are the obvious ones – fields like consulting and corporate law, for example, are frequently described as being too demanding on young mothers time and too “male” in their knee-jerk behavior patterns. Commodity trading floors are still rough-edged, often raunchy, places. Would-be partners at major corporate law firms work insanely long hours. (Pg. 187)

Her advice:
Don’t go into a field without first understanding the rules of the game and considering deeply whether you want to play them.

I have mentioned many times before about the number of hours accountants are required to work. When I returned to college to major in accounting I was fully aware of this requirement. It never occurred to me while in my twenties this hour requirement would eventually become cumbersome and if I were to have had children impossible. At the time, my only focus was to enter a career where I’d earn a decent salary.

What rules do you wish you would have known about your chosen career prior to entering it?

The Savvy Reader Book Gift List

As I was contemplating what to buy friends and family this holiday season I realized many of my favorite reads of 2013 would make excellent gifts. Here is my hypothetical gift list:

For my friend and colleague Kate:

Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. This is the best career book I‘ve read in years and one that I wish I’d read earlier in my career. I recommend this book for any woman who is looking to re-charge her career.

As a companion read I would include:

Debora L. Spar’s Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection.Spar is the president of Barnard College and has written a book about how our culture has evolved in the last 50-years. She details how women struggled to gain power, but instead ended up caught in an endless quest for perfection. I found myself nodding in agreement as Spar describes how women today try to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother and the perfect career person. 

For my sister who is the mother of three children under the age of eight:

Crystal Ponti's The Mother of All Meltdowns: Real Stories of Moms' Finest (Worst, Completely Awful) Moments. When I saw the look on my sister’s face as her 4-year old kept insisting he wasn’t wearing pants or shoes on our outing I realized perhaps motherhood is much harder than I realized. After reading the melt-down moments the authors share in this book I hope my sister learns she is not alone and that there is no such thing as a perfect mom or child. Please see Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection from above.

For my niece who will be moving to Santa Monica by herself next year:

Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signals that Protect Us From Violence. This book explores how fear is a gift that can be used to keep us safe and explains how we can spot even subtle signs of danger—before it’s too late. Gavin teaches us how to listen to and trust our intuition. I recommend this book to anyone who will be living on their own for the first time.

For the niece who is graduating from college this December and has nothing constructive to do until grad school begins next fall:

Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. It could be a coincidence, but after reading this book I snapped out of the funk I had been in for almost a year. I recommend this book - a compilation of Strayed’s Dear Sugar advice columns - to any young adult approaching their quarter-life crises.

For my non-fiction loving friend who read and enjoyed Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman after learning of it from this blog post:

George Parker's The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. I am currently reading this book and am amazed by how comprehensive it is. Packer follows the lives of several Americans over the past three decades. In doing so he describes how America which was once a super power is beginning to become undone. I recommend this book for anyone who likes to read about current events or who is interested in the increasing disparity between the rich and poor.

 

Please note, I am an Amazon affiliate

What was your favorite reads of the year? Would you give them as gifts?

Interview With the Authors of the book: The Mother of All Meltdowns

This month The Savvy Reader Book Club is reading Crystal Ponti's book The Mother of All Meltdowns: Real Stories of Moms' Finest (Worst, Completely Awful) Moments. Crystal, along with twenty-nine fellow (mom) bloggers, has written a book featuring tales from the trenches of motherhood. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing several of the book’s authors. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did:


What is a mommy meltdown?

Natasha Peter:
A mommy meltdown is one of those moments in motherhood where you just completely lose it. Nothing seems to go right, and you've somewhat lost your sense of hope that it ever will. It could be that moment where you hide in the bathroom or in a closet to get away from your child or the moment where you snap on any - and everything around you.

Rabia Lieber:
I think it’s that moment you just can’t take anymore and you explode; blow your top; break down and cry. The exact reaction looks different on different moms, but the basic principle is the same.

Who came up with the idea to write this book?
Rabia Lieber:
The idea was all Crystal Ponti’s! I’m just so honored that she asked me to be a part of it!

How did you find your tribe? Did you know each other before blogging? If not have you met in person?

Michelle Nahom:
I've actually written about this subject on my blog. See my post How To Grow Your Blog by Building a Tribe of Online Friends.

I started blogging a little over a year ago and was just slowly moving along until I discovered the SITS Girls. I had people reading my blog from my industry and my community, but I just couldn't seem to take it any further. Once I discovered SITS, things started to come together. I met a lot of new bloggers, and started commenting and low and behold, I started making connections…and friends! I've actually met several of my Meltdown co-authors in person. I was attending a conference on photo organizing in Chicago and convinced one of my first blogging buddies AnnMarie Gubenko to meet me there. I met Kristen Daukas and Alexa Bigwarfe at a SITS conference and we became fast friends. Tamara Bowman and another mutual blog friend, Ilene Evans, drove to my house this summer and we had a pool playdate with the kids and lunch! Crystal of course was one of my first blog friends, and I talk to her via email and Facebook quite frequently. I count many of the Meltdown moms among my closest blog friends!

AnnMarie Gubenko:
I think most of us found each other through our blogs. I knew some of the ladies because I follow their blogs or they follow mine. One of the best parts of being a part of this book is that I feel my tribe has grown. We are all a part of something so even if we can't make our rounds to every blog, we know we can count on each other for support. I think I have two bloggers in real life and hope to meet more in the future.

Rabia Lieber:
My tribe seems to have really solidified as a part of writing this book. There are other co-contributors as well as a few others whom I have been in contact with on a regular basis. I haven’t met any of them in real life, but that would be pretty cool if it happened!

Some of you shared really personal stories, was it difficult to write about those moments?

Michelle Nahom:
It was really difficult. Scary to a certain extent. When you meltdown, you're really showing yourself in the worst possible light. You could do everything right as a mom and in that one moment, you look like the biggest raving lunatic. In my story, I lost it with an ER doctor because he didn't want to call my son's pediatrician even though he was having very serious medical issues. Should I have just taken a deep breath and maybe called my doctor's service on my own, since the ER doctor didn't want to do it? In hindsight, maybe I should have. But I was in a panic, terrified over what was happening with my son, and I didn't even think to call his doctor on my own. I wonder how many other people heard me lose it in the ER that day, and what they thought. But what is done is done. I can't take it back. And the bottom line is, we all have a tolerance point at which the stress gets to be too much, and a meltdown is inevitable. It happens to everyone. It made me feel better to read the other stories because I realized I wasn't alone.

Helicopter Mom and Just Plain Dad:
Yes, for me it was difficult to discuss my daughter receiving her driver’s license and how very emotional that made me. I have tried to hide that fact from my daughter and even husband. Even though as a parent we prepare for our children's first times and are happy for them; inside it is difficult for parents, especially mom's, to know their "babies" are growing. I was so thrilled that my daughter gained her license but it was so much more than just her getting to drive alone. Independence is something we talk a lot about but it's much easier when their independence is still "under our control"; such as their walking...obviously they do that under our careful watch. 

Driving really hit home that she can get into a vehicle and head out on her own. And even though we are years away from her leaving the nest...it is a giant step for teens to have vehicles and learn a whole new responsibility. Without their parents in the car. 

Rabia Lieber:
I am usually an open book. I don’t find it hard to share about myself at all. I actually still have another meltdown story in my head, but it really involves my daughter in a way that she might find embarrassing, so I haven’t written it publically…yet. Plus, I haven’t had enough time away from that instance to write about it yet.

In the introduction of the book, motherhood is described as painted in soft colors with lullabies serving as background music. What was been your biggest surprise about becoming a mother?

Natasha Peter:
Once I found out I was pregnant, I turned into an extreme mama bear. I didn't understand how I could completely fall head over heels in love with this little baby growing inside of me. I am surprised by how much I've changed and grown since my son was born. I didn't see myself as nurturing before, but the motherly instinct definitely hit me like a ton of bricks.

Rabia Lieber:
I am surprised daily by how different each of my three children are! They come from the same parents and live in the same house!! They look so similar to each other, but act (and react) so differently!

Is there anything you wish you would have known about motherhood beforehand?

Natasha Peter:
I wish I had known how quickly time flies by! It just seemed like yesterday that he was born and now my son is almost 2 1/2 years old. Time truly flies! That's why it's my focus to enjoy every solitary minute with him. I want to enjoy my time with him before he's old enough to want his own space and not want to spend time with him!

AnnMarie Gubenko:
I wish I knew how much I was going to miss sleep or that you will never have a day off again. Even if you get a break, your kids will still invade your thoughts and worries. I think I knew how much joy they would bring me but I don't think I knew how much my heart would break when your kid is struggling, hurt or sick. I wish I would have known how fast time goes and that before you know it, you are done with one stage and onto the next and it usually happens the minute you think you have a handle on the stage they were previously in.

Rabia Lieber:
How important it would be to find and keep mom friends. This gig gets pretty isolating sometimes.

Do you have suggestions for other moms to help prevent melt downs?

Michelle Nahom:
Time outs work for me. I mean a time out for me! Sometimes I just need to walk away from the situation and take a deep breath and think about it away from the stressors. Usually if I can do this, I can pull myself together and think of alternative ways to deal with the situation. But I need the breather.

Natasha Peter:
Choose your battles, and you'll win the war! Don't try to prevent the inevitable - you will have a meltdown at some point in your time as a mom. You'll drive yourself nuts trying to prevent it. Just figure out how to make your way to the other side of the meltdown. 

Rabia Lieber:
I’ve learned to better recognize my triggers. I can usually predict when a situation might get close to meltdown potential and I start a verbal dialogue in my head to keep my cool. I often have to remind myself that children are not miniature adults. That is my mantra some days.

Is there anything else you would like my readers to know about your book or it's authors?

Natasha Peter:
If I had to choose another book to be a part of, I would love to be with this same group of women. They are dedicated, focused, funny, talented, and so much more. 

Rabia Lieber:
I just can’t get over what an awesome opportunity it has been to publish this book with these amazing ladies. And then to hear all the other stories that people share with us because they feel less alone in their struggles. I am humbled by it.

Where can we find you?
Michelle Nahom:
Blogging at A Dish of Daily Life
Facebook A Dish of Daily Life
Tweeting as DishofDailyLife
Pinning as Dish of Daily Life
Google+ as Michelle Nahom

Natasha Peter:
Right now, I have 2 blogs - Epic Mommy Adventures, which focuses on my stories as a single mom, and Grow With Epic Mommy, which focuses on blog hops, giveaways, product reviews, and so much more!

Hovering high and low, C. Lee "sealy" and Khris Reed as Plain to Plane on Helicopter Mom and Just Plane Dad:
Visit us: http://www.helicoptermomandjustplanedad.com
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HMaJPD
Like us on FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/HMAJPD
Join us on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cleereed

Rabia Lieber:
On the couch…in that corner that is somehow shaped exactly like my rear end…oh! You mean online? The oh-so-creatively named: http://thelieberfamily.com

AnnMarie Gubenko:
Tidbits from the Queen of Chaos
Twitter handle @queenofchaosmom

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/tidbitsfromthequeenofchaos

 

A huge thank-you to all of the interviewees.  Please check out their melt down stories in The Mother of All Meltdowns: Real Stories of Moms' Finest (Worst, Completely Awful) Moments.

Feel free to share your insights into motherhood and mommy meltdown moments in the comments.

The Savvy Reader Book Club Choices for November

The Savvy Reader Book Club is an online nonfiction book club created for the serious reader.  At the beginning of each month I select one or two books then host discussion posts covering the books throughout the month.  If you write a blog post about one of my selections I will be happy to include its link in my final post.

I actually cannot believe it is November 1st already and yes I do realize I am a bit behind on previous book club posts.  I am going to really try to catch-up this month.

Here are my book club selections for November:

Fellow blogger Crystal Ponti's book The Mother of All Meltdowns: Real Stories of Moms' Finest (Worst, Completely Awful) Moments. Crystal has written, along with twenty-nine fellow (mom) bloggers, a book that features tales from the trenches of motherhood. This anthology takes an honest look at the moments that bring even the strongest mama to her knees. Bonus content reveals the secrets to surviving the most harrowing meltdown with grace, composure, and maybe a little wine.

I've already begun reading this book and guarantee if you decide to read this one along with me you will not be disappointed:

   

 

For my second selection I am going with Seth Godin's book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us:

Have you read either of these books? If so what were your thoughts? Be sure to stop back  throughout the month to participate in my book discussions.

Please Note, I am an Amazon Affiliate

What To Do When Your Daughter is Dating a Loser

My friend Jess’s nineteen year-old daughter has been dating this boy for two years. Jess and her husband have never been fond of this boy who they describe as lazy and a loser. They were hoping their smart, beautiful daughter would find a new boyfriend when she was away at college last year, but that didn’t happen. She is now home for the summer and spends all her free time with her boyfriend. This is causing problems at home. When Jess would not allow her daughter to attend an out-of-state family reunion with her boyfriend after their own family vacation was cancelled Jess’s daughter spent the entire weekend sulking in her room. Jess and her husband plan on sitting their daughter down and demanding she break-up with him. They plan on telling her she is too good for him, she’s wasting her time and he’s a loser. Her question for me was when should this conversation take place. Now, before the 4^th of July holiday or to wait until right before her daughter returns to school. Her concern is if she has this conversation now it will ruin her family’s summer because her daughter will be impossible to live with, but if she waits she will have to continue watching her daughter be smitten with this boy for the rest of the summer.

My recommendation:

Don’t have this conversation at all. Your daughter is not going to listen to you. You mentioned your daughter’s high school friends held an intervention with her. They told your daughter they didn’t like her boyfriend and suggested she break-up with him. What did your daughter do? She stopped being friends with these girls. She is going to do the same thing with you. She will stop confiding in you and start sneaking around behind your back. She is nineteen, an adult. She could even do something crazy like move out, quit school or get married. She has a promise ring.

I think you should invite your daughter’s boyfriend into your home from time to time. Try to understand what your daughter sees in him. You didn’t mention if he was abusive in any way or controlling. Just that she is too young, this is the first boy she’s dated and that she spends too much time with him. I would play that angle. Encourage her to make new girl friends especially at school, to try everything, even things her boyfriend doesn’t like to do. One of my biggest regrets is not discovering who I was and trying new things when I was younger. She needs to tire or grow out of her boyfriend on her own.

Our other friend suggested Jess make sure her daughter does not get pregnant. Jess said her daughter is on the pill, for cramps though. She is sure her daughter is not having sex.

I came home and told my husband about Jess’s dilemma. Once again he disagrees with me. If this were his daughter, he would sit her down and tell her she is too young to date just one boy. End of story.

Have you ever not approved of someone your child was dating? What did you do? Or from the other angle - Did your parents ever disapprove of someone you were dating? Did they talk to you about it? What did you do?

If you enjoyed this post you may also like:
Know Your Limits and Learn to Say No
Drinking Buddies are Not Real Friends
Will I Be Pretty