Dear Gramps,
Hi, I’m 14 and I have a boyfriend who’s 11 and he kisses a lot according to my friend, and so I was wondering, when I should kiss him because we’ve only been going out for a day.

Kayli

Dear Kayli,

Here’s the plan. The next time you are together and he tries to kiss you, slap his face! and then say, “Don’t you dare try that with me again!”

Now I have a question for you. What do you mean that you have a boyfriend and that you’ve only been going out for a day? I guess that by “boyfriend” you mean that you have a friend who is a boy, and that’s OK. Girls shouldn’t only have girls who are friends and boys only have boys who are friends. But there is also another meaning to “boyfriend,” and that is a boy with whom one is romantically involved. In spite of what goes on around you, among your school mates and other friends, if you have any sense at all, you will not have any romantic involvement with anyone until you are AL LEAST sixteen years old. Then, it would not be inappropriate to recognize the presence of romantic feelings for someone else. Of course, before the age of sixteen those feelings will also come. However, we must be in control of ourselves and do only that which is right. So, when those feelings come, say, to kiss someone, one dismisses them by saying, “Not now, we’ll wait until I’m older.”

When you do arrive at the magical age of 16, several changes will take place. First, and perhaps foremost, you will be legally allowed to possess an automobile driver’s license (if you can pass the written and driving tests). Then parental restrictions on dating, i.e., “going out” with a boy may be lifted. However, PLEASE let that curtain raise slowly! First, you should allow yourself to “go out” with boys only in groups of boys and girls. At age 16 you should NEVER be alone with a boy who is 16 years old or older–(and you wouldn’t want to be with anyone any younger). Here’s the problem–sexual urges begin to peak at about that age, and if you were alone with some undisciplined guy, you might have to do a lot more than just slap his face to get away from him!

Then, as later on, you begin to go on dates as couples, let those dates by DATES–meaning going together to a specific activity for a specific purpose with specific starting and ending times. This business of HANGING OUT together with no specific plans for any specific activities or no specific time limits is simply fraught with danger.

We live in a very wicked world, and it is growing more wicked by the day! So it is of utmost importance to those who have any sense of right and wrong, to Choose The Right, to appeal continually to our Father in Heaven for the strength to maintain the right, and to live honorable, upright, moral and chaste lives. Then we will be the favored children of our Father in Heaven and may live to fulfill the sacred missions for which we have been sent to this earth in these terrible times.

Gramps