Monday, September 26, 2011

what to do what to do

the girl has been telling us about some troubling things going on with her friends lately.

first, did you know being bi or gay is the new in thing? well, i didn't. several of the girl's girlfriends say they are bi or lesbian...not one, not two...several. one of the girls has dated boys and girls (she is 14) and last year sort of hit on the girl. the girl admits she doesn't care if they are or aren't but that their talk about kissing girls or detailed talks about it make her uncomfortable and when she says something they make fun of her for being "christian" or a prude. granted, i think a lot of this is just talk--the girls think they're being cool or rebellious or on the cutting edge--and honestly i don't care if they're gay or not. but, it makes me curious that so many of the girls are talking about it. kinda puts me in mind of those teen pregnancy packs that were going around. did i miss something? is this a trend i didn't know about??

second, the girl has another friend who is posting all sorts of freaky stuff on her facebook page. writing and posting dark poems, claiming she's a cutter, that she's suicidal, taking all these dark pictures of herself and posting them online. i don't know her parents. my girl confronted her about it and the girl acted like she had no idea what she was talking about. the girl says she acts perfectly normal at school, is happy, has friends, etc. this particular girl has had issues in the past--in 7th grade she accused my daughter of bullying her, going so far as to make anonymous phone calls to the bully hotline. it was a strange situation. after that she started following my girl around like a puppy dog and now she's acting like this. again--i don't know if this is serious or just for show.

do i get involved? do i call her parents, whom i don't know, and tell them they need to look at their daughter's fb page?

and w/ the bi/gay thing--i know one of the girls parents fairly well (we don't hang out or anything but we run into each other all the time because of our daughters). i don't know if they know what's going on w/ their kid.

i'm hesitant to do anything because for now my girl talks to us and tells us everything. i worry that if i start talking to parents or getting involved she won't trust us and tell us things we need to know about herself.

what would you do?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This happened with my son when he was younger (the dark, morbid, cutting stuff in his peers. I asked him about the other person )making statements and asked him if he thought I needed to call the parents. This might be an extreme case, since my son and I sometimes have serious conversations about that topic and he knows not to dismiss it.

If this girl is spending a lot of time with your girl, I would call the parents, I think...

Ack. Teenagery is not for the faint of heart.

xo

Hotch Potchery said...

I'd tell the cutter's parents---but not the gay/bi parents--in my opinion, very, very different situations.

Unknown said...

Yikes.

I'm with Hotch.

You know whats messed up? People dont ever say thank you for telling me this. Theres way too much shooting of the messenger.

Good luck honey.

Surely said...

I would definitely talk with the emo girls parents. Better safe than sorry for sure.

Take the tack of "I would want someone to tell me if it were my kid" Also, like someone said already, go in knowing that it might not be a positive response.

It would suck to stay silent & have something awful happen.

I call big fat BS on being "bi", i think it's an attention thing. However, I do believe that because being gay is acceptable now, it is more visible.

Teenagers are just exhausting, aren't they?

Pseudo said...

I'm with Movie, Teenagery is not for the faint of heart.

Same as the others, the cutter girl seems like her parents should know. The ones claiming to be bi or lesbian, I'd leave it alone.