Dated

I mentioned a while ago that my daughter had arranged to meet a kid she knew from karate at a bowling alley. It was as close to a 'date' as she's had, and we were a little nervous about it. Just recently, my wife told me that on my daughter's Facebook page (which she has access to but I do not; my daughter feels that having one parent friend her is weird, but having both is untenable (doesn't she think we talk to each other? I wondered, when my wife told me this)), there were some posts by the kid saying, in summary, why haven't you responded to my text messages? To which my daughter replied I was at band camp; I didn't have my phone. This, again, made us just a tad nervous. A boy? Contacting my daughter?

So I was intrigued by this, which I found on a New York Times blog site article about kids and dating:

I laid down some ground rules. I told (our son) that he may have a “girlfriend” if he chooses and that he may select anyone he likes. That until we meet her, and until I speak with her parents, he is not allowed to meet her anywhere, though she is always welcome to visit with him in our living room, with her parents’ permission. That he must have express permission to meet her outside our home (before making plans with her), and that I would strongly prefer that he meet her in a group setting.

That sounds just like us, and makes me think that perhaps we're not totally Amish in the way we think about these things. Though, reading the readers' comments, perhaps we are.