Your Relationship Should Feel Like This | Shaan Ross Smith

There are some parents that say like no dating until 16, no dating until 18.

What do you think about having that rule? Because I feel like obviously if you're really young, you might, you know, have a little boyfriend or girlfriend.

It's not really real.

But what if, you know, a kid at like 14, like honestly falls in love? What do you think about parents like having a rule for like an age of dating?

So I'm a parent myself.

I've got two teenagers and a 10-year-old and I understand why parents do that.

I understand why they set rules like that because they're trying to protect you.

But unfortunately what we know is sometimes when those rules are set to protect you, what they do is force those relationships underground.

Yeah.

So they forced some of that behaviour to go unspoken, can't share it with my parents because they don't know about it.

Mm-hmm.

So I do urge parents to really consider what the motivation is behind limiting relationships.

And if it is to protect them, then how else do we protect our children without going to those lengths? Yeah.

And for me, it's about open communication, open conversations, you know, getting really familiar with what a healthy relationship is ourselves and then having conversations with our teens about that.

We're not the experts either, parents.

You know, so we're not the experts when it comes to a relationship.

All we know is what we've experienced ourselves.

But we're still so hopeful that we can protect our own children.

Yeah.

So I think it's a balance of the two.

In my own experience with my eldest son, he fell in love quite early and he's been with his girlfriend now for a couple of years.

Aww.

And in the early days, I'm probably going to embarrass him for saying this, but that's all right.

I embarrass him all the time.

In the early days, I was trying to navigate it.