How to Handle Your Child’s First Crush

Written by Blake McSharry on February 7, 2011 – 5:49 am

“Oh, how cute.” That’s what crossed my mind when a boy from summer camp asked my oldest daughter, who was in the fourth grade at the time, to go to the movies. (She said no and ran from the phone.) But as I can attest, a first crush — whether it’s initiated by your child or she’s on the receiving end of the romantic attention — is definitely anything but adorable from her perspective.

“Crushes are serious,” says Julia Simens, a family therapist from Lake Tahoe Incline Village, Nevada, now living in Thailand. Like me, Simens knows from experience. When her son, Grant, was 11, he wrote a children’s book, “Spirit of Saint Valentine: an Expat’s Tale of Love,” which is about love in an international elementary school. “I hadn’t given crushes much thought until Grant opened my eyes to how important they are from a kid’s point of view,” Simens says.

The fact is that Cupid’s arrow can aim low, striking kids as early as 7 or 8. And though it’s easy to trivialize this experience, a child’s emotions are just as real as the fervor we might experience when we’re infatuated. “Kids can fall in love by all developmental measures as soon as you can begin to measure their feelings,” says Carleton Kendrick, a Boston-based family therapist and author of “Take Out Your Nose Ring, Honey, We’re Going to Grandma’s.” “There’s no such thing as puppy love.”

Crushes are a healthy part of life. Besides being good practice for the future, they can teach kids a lot about relationships and themselves. On the other hand, they can also be a source of pain and difficult for your child to handle, especially into the preteen and teen years. “When the hormones kick in, kids have more of a physical response to a crush and that can be confusing because they’ve already got so much going on emotionally — from trying to figure out their identity and how to fit in socially, academically and within the family,” says Stephanie Haen, a licensed clinical social worker at Family Centers in Greenwich, Conn.

Though you may not always need to get involved, there are things you can do — and things you shouldn’t — to help your child deal with love’s first blush. After counseling hundreds of parents on this issue, our experts weigh in on the dos and don’ts of managing this tender milestone.

DO:
Have talks, not “the talk.” Help your elementary-age child prepare to deal with a crush, which is a distant cousin to dating, by having an ongoing dialogue from a young age in a way she can understand about being respectful of her own body and herself. Then, as your child ages into the preteen and teen years, keep talking. These days, preteens and teens put pressure each other to add sexual exploration to the equation under the misguided notion that if they don’t have sex with their crush, it’s not really love. “This is a big change from what it used to be like with kids 10 or 15 years ago,” says Kendrick, who has been in practice for 30 years. So be aware of what’s going on and acknowledge it with your child. “You might say, ‘You might feel pressured. But you don’t have to do anything. You need to trust your feelings of being uncomfortable. And even if you’re a little bit curious, that doesn’t mean you have to say yes,’” he says.

To bring up tough subjects like these and get your child talking, a good way to start, is “Gee, I’ve read that,” and then fill in the blank with what you want to address, such as “Girls are having oral sex, and they’re only 13. Do you think that’s going on at your school?” Keeping the discussion going — despite all the eye rolling — lets your child know that you know what she might be going through and builds trust so she is more likely to come to you for advice if she needs to.

Let your child learn from the experience. If your child has a crush and it’s unrequited, don’t trivialize it by saying things like, “Oh, you’ll get over it,” or “Well, that was just puppy love.” Instead, console him and let him be upset and grieve the loss. But also stress that rejection is a normal part of life and that’s what dating (in your teens) is all about — that you don’t always find the right person and it’s not always reciprocated, Haen says.

Teach your child how to deal with unwanted romantic attention. If another child has a crush on yours and it’s not mutual, encourage your child to politely nip it in the bud. Role-play at home and have him practice an “I’m not interested” script, such as, “Thanks for all the notes, but I really wish you wouldn’t give them to me anymore because they’re upsetting me.” If that doesn’t work, call the other child’s parents. (If you’ve got a child in middle school or beyond, talk to your child first, before making that phone call.) Unwanted attention feels like a pressure for children of all ages. Kids on the receiving end of crushes can suffer from psychosomatic symptoms such as stomachaches and headaches and not want to go to school. “It’s the same kind of thing I’ve witnessed with kids who’ve been bullied,” Kendrick says.

Monitor the situation. Kids, especially tweens and teens, in reciprocal crushes can take things to the extreme by, for example, IM’ing until 10 p.m. or spending lots of their free time with each other because they’re mimicking what they’ve observed in their older siblings or the adults around them. So be sure to set boundaries, such as curfews and limits on computer time, to help your child balance his responsibilities with his social life. If you get the sense that your child must have contact with his crush to get through the day or that he’s no longer spending time with his friends or concentrating on his schoolwork because he’s so focused on his crush or that his behavior could change into stalking, he may need professional help to sort out why the crush has become obsessive. “It could be a sign of something else that’s going on in her life,” says Haen. “Kids might cling to a crush if things are rocky at home between their parents, they’re struggling in school for the first time or something’s going on in their social circle.”

Next: What Not to Do

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