Young 12 year old girls are very impressionable. They have not had the advantage of a lot of dating, they are just starting, they don't know what love is all about and many will do things they normally would never think of, all for the "love" of the person they now worship. Their hormones have just started to flow in full force. Too many times you hear of them meeting someone on some internet forum and suddenly they change drastically. Can you remember the young girl, around the same age, maybe even a bit younger, who arranged her own air flight and flew half way across the world to meet up with the man she fell in love with on the internet?
It is too easy to point the fingers at the parents, especially in light of the fact that the parents are both dead and can not defend themselves. By what has come out in the press from family friends and the like, it appears the parents were not at all in favor of her dating this man.
Yes, you are the parent, but until you have actually BEEN the parents of teenagers, don't make blanket statements that you can control where your children are at all times, control who they see at all times, control what they do at all times. It simply is not possible or advisable to try and control your children that way. Yes, you want to parent them and advise them, but you simply cannot control them in some of the fashions that have been suggested in this thread. Yes, you want to keep them out of harms way but it appears that this situation grew in leaps in bounds in quite a short period of time.
Keep in mind also that if you do indeed try to control someone to the point where you know where they are at all times, who they see at all times, etc, then usually in the end, you will lose control in a big hurry and instead of endearing that person to you, in effect, you drive them away.
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