I’ve been looking through the Parenting Manuel they gave when my oldest was born but I don’t see anything on what to do when she gets five, yes FIVE, boys professing their love for her.
Liz is 10.
‘Daddy, daddy!’ is how it all started one day after school. ‘You’ll never guess what happened!’ Liz was named the lead in her school’s play, Olivia, a sort of Oliver Twist story where Olivia, that is Liz – with 160 lines and a couple of solos – is the poor orphan girl who saves the day.
Not long after, these five young gentlemen lined up to tell Liz that they wanted her to be their girlfriend.
Liz then interviewed these boys to get to know them better. Then did what any sensible girl would do. She asked them to put something in writing. Like a formal application.
The next day she had three letters which Liz read to me on our living room easy-chair. With her permission, I share just a couple of lines.
“I bet they’d start a war over you,” wrote Boy #1. Boy #2 included a big red heart. Boy #3 said he wants to get the relationship ‘back on track.’ He attacks Boy #4 for being a saboteur (never a good idea.) All the writers have a thing for her long, golden hair.
Did I mention that my daughter is 10?
At school, Boy #1, who Liz is supposed to air-kiss in the school play, has already engaged me in conversation. In German. He’s from Munich, he tells me. So we’ve already had a kind of man-to-man talk.
For her part, Liz has told me that she’s happy to stay unattached, which, I suspect, is because she doesn’t want to lose her home.
No, the manual doesn’t say anything about this for 10-year-olds.
But my view is that when your daughter’s first real boyfriend comes around, if you shoot him, then the word gets out fast enough. And the rest sort of takes care of itself.
Hi, Thom;
This is good news! To pass along my Mom’s advice: “There’s safety in numbers.” So, she always encouraged my having multiple boyfriends.
Hmmm…. Maybe you’d better hold off on getting a shotgun for now….