Wise Readers,
What if there were a way to inoculate your kids against sexual peer pressure (or smoking)? There is. It’s easy. And it’s free.
Read on!
From Joan N.: —Coaching my pre-teen daughter that a boy better ASK before he kisses her!!!—
Very interesting. As the mother of a 6th grade daughter who is just beginning to explore the tender feelings of attraction to boys, I LOVE the idea of “You Better ASK First (dammit).” [Article here: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/stolen-kisses-why-we-dont-want-to-be-asked-first-but-youd-be.html]
Together she and I have been talking (and talking, and talking …) to explore and define how to address these feelings.
What brought this on?
Recently a boy she really likes asked her to the 6th grade dance. I hadn’t seen this coming. In fact, she had been so adamant against attending the dances that I hadn’t coached her on what to say. [Article on how to talk to your child about accepting or rejecting a dance date: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/the-how-to-say-no-primer-how-to-say-no-to-a-boy-who-asks-you.html]
Poor thing was so overwhelmed that first she told him “yes,” and then she told him “no” because the fright had set in and she needed to let herself off the hook so she fabricated a story that she had plans with her family for that Friday night. Long story short, she ended up attending the dance anyway …. her first one, on Valentine’s Day, no less.
Instantly the text messages began to ding and the labels got shouted down the halls at school, a la: “Here comes [name of boy’s] GIRLFRIEND!!!” …. “Are you and [name of boy] DATING??!”
[OMG, I am secretly having a nervous breakdown inside.]
Being the type of child (as all children?) who needs concrete examples to sort this all out, together we devised a tiered system to classify our feelings.
*Friends who are friends
*Special friends - someone you have tender (romantic) feelings toward and who returns those feelings
*A boyfriend/girlfriend - this is much higher level. Don’t worry about this until much later
*Other much higher levels such as going steady, dating, commitment, and marriage
Being particularly uncomfortable with the word “dating” my daughter used the term “in-a- pro-pro” (= inappropriate) to nix that one, right off the bat. Following our discussion, and this is what she came up with for her comfort level, she told me her answer is:
“NO, we are NOT dating. That is in-a-pro-pro in 6th grade. Dating is something I might do in COLLEGE.”
Thus I am encouraging her to set her boundaries early and often. She decided she can have a “good friend” in 6th grade that she has special feelings for, i.e., a “special friend” and they can text (I have the password) and hang out together (in a group, under supervision) but that’s all it is.
And once that information is processed, I will coach her, so she can then coach her “special friend” that ASKING before kissing is REQUIRED and regardless of what anyone else may or may not be doing around their lockers at school, that in her world kissing is in-a-pro-pro until she starts dating, which I foresee at age 35 (not college) and until then she is only allowed to kiss her parents.
ACK!!
Duana’s response: —How to inoculate your child against unwanted sexual contact/peer pressure—:
Hi, Joan,
Just when I think you’ve stopped reading LoveScience, I find out you were always there :). Welcome, I’ve missed your voice.
You’re not alone in wanting to be very protective of your daughter. I don’t know whether you read all the responses to the “what if this were your teenage child” question [Article here: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/stolen-kisses-why-we-dont-want-to-be-asked-first-but-youd-be.html], but even among the very young men and women who answered this question *while themselves teenagers*, they often felt protective of the children (especially daughters) they don’t yet have. You’ll see that a couple of the guys and (if memory serves) a woman or two basically said that their daughter would not be going on unsupervised dates as a teenager, won’t be kissing at all prior to age 18, etc.
And hopefully, we all know that while our intentions are coming from a very good place of love and protection, actually thinking our kids are going to fear the word and concept of Dating until they are truly adults? Is not very realistic in the mainstream Westernized world. [Article on teen sexuality and what parents need to say to their kids is here: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/sex-kids-have-questionsyouve-got-answers.html.]
What is realistic, though, is your expression of your values and beliefs—the ongoing conversation you’re having with your child. And given that she is in the 6th grade, yes, requiring a verbalization is a good idea. Your child is still very much a *child*—not even a teen. She needs some time to figure out what she is and is not comfortable with and how that all fits in with her mom’s and family’s value system. A number of Wise Readers, male and female, younger and notsomuch, acknowledge that the teenage years cover a broad spectrum of development, and that the younger the teen, the greater the need for verbalizing what’s okay and what isn’t. That discussion needs to happen between you and her (kudos!), and later between her and her friend/boyfriend/special friend.
Joan, you’ve brought up a great way to help your daughter actually live by your values and her emotions in each moment, and I want to expand on that. It’s something any willing parent can do, and it’s powerful. The technique is called attitude inoculation. In essence, exposing people to a weak (but not overly persuasive) attack on their existing attitudes is protective because it gives folks a handy way to refute real-life, stronger attacks later. Here’s how it works.
Pick a topic or scenario, and role play. Be the person who’s saying something against your values, the person pressuring your daughter to do what she doesn’t want to do. Ask, “If someone said/did X to you, what would you say back?” For example: “If you didn’t want to kiss a guy but he said, ‘Come on, it’s only a kiss, everyone does it’, what would you say back?”
It turns out that when kids rehearse comebacks and rationales, they are better-able to stand up to peer pressure in the moment.
For instance, attitude inoculation researcher William McGuire’s theory was used to inoculate children against smoking. In Cheryl Perry’s experiment, middle-schoolers were paired with older peers who role-played being someone who pressured the kids to smoke—for instance, calling a kid “chicken” for refusing to try smoking—and asked them what they would say if someone offered them cigarettes. Then the older peers helped the younger ones figure out comebacks: “I’d be a real chicken if I smoked just to impress you,” etc. Follow-up studies over a period of years showed that when other factors were accounted for (such as whether each kid’s parent smoked), the attitude inoculated group took up smoking at about half the rate of the kids who hadn’t been taught to resist peer pressure that way.
As the APA puts it, “Programs that have made whole or partial use of attitude inoculation programs have repeatedly documented the effectiveness of attitude inoculation to prevent teenage smoking, to curb illicit drug use, and to reduce teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. In comparison with old-fashioned interventions such as simple education about the risks of smoking or teenage pregnancy, attitude inoculation frequently reduces risky behaviors by 30-70% (see Botvin et al., 1995; Ellickson & Bell, 1990; Perry et al., 1980) [emphasis added].“
Please note, though, that it’s important that the inoculation use a *weak* argument against the value you’re shoring up. You don’t want to role play with extremely persuasive arguments against your pro-Asking-before-kissing value, for instance, or this could backfire and have your child thinking Asking is dumb. The concept of inoculation is that just as you wouldn’t inject a full-strength virus into someone’s arm to protect against the flu—because that would give the recipient the actual flu—so you also would not demolish your own arguments in inoculation sessions. Start lame. The strong, handy refutation will grow and emerge when your daughter needs it, just like the flu shot will allow her to combat the full-strength virus later on.
Upshot? You’re doing a great job. By expressing your values, asking your daughter how she feels about various scenarios and relationships, and helping her come up with words to use in her own defense, she will likely be able to say what she needs to when the time comes. You’re not leaving her unprepared.
From Tara: —Data biased much?—
Have you considered that your data might be biased? People who respond to the “Let’s say you’re dating someone new…” question are primed with the idea that they are in an established like-like relationship. They’re imagining a hypothetical kissing partner that they already know they like. What about first dates? Or that scenario where the guy who looked cute at the bookstore turned out to be a drip over dinner and MY GOD can I just go home already before he bores me to death? Sure, we’d all love to be swept off our feet by some romantic hottie. In real life, a lot of us have forced conversations over cocktails with a lot of toads.
The entire point behind asking for the first kiss is a) that you don’t know whether they like you, and b) the assumption that your date doesn’t want to kiss somebody they’re not attracted to or interested in.
I suspect that if you had rephrased the question to include the possibility that people might feel mostly neutral toward, or even not interested in, their date by the end, your results would be different.
Duana’s response: —Wording Effects and a question—
Hi, Tara,
It’s very hard to write good questionnaires, because you’re absolutely correct that wording has an impact on outcome. I routinely realize my suckiness at questionnaire-writing as I am in the midst of it.
The question you’re referring to was phrased, “Let’s say you’re dating someone new, and this is going to be your first kiss with them. Would you want them to ask before kissing you? (Answer in as much detail as you would like.)” I intentionally left it open whether this was a first date, because first kisses can occur before, during, or long after that encounter and the question is really about the first kiss. I also intentionally told my students nothing about the questionnaire—including nothing about why I was asking the questions.
I agree it’s very likely that if I had phrased the question to be someone a person was neutral about, the results probably would have been different (more in favor of the Ask). And I think that for my purposes, I was asking the question I wanted to ask—namely, whether people who have not yet kissed but who like each other at least well enough to go out together would want to be asked before the kiss happens.
You bring up something I wonder, though. Am I right in assuming that most women feel at least a little attraction to someone they’ve accepted a date (perhaps repeated dates) with? Men commonly report that they don’t go out with someone they aren’t attracted to; why bother pursuing someone you don’t want? But how common is it that a woman accepts a first and possibly repeated dates with someone she really isn’t attracted to? I’m not talking about the case where you thought you were attracted until they started talking/boring, but the case where the attraction just wasn’t there and the woman said Yes hoping it would grow. I think that happens. But I wonder how often…
From Joan N:
LOVE attitude inoculation!! Thank you for explaining it and giving such great examples. I plan to inoculate many more attitudes around here. What a relief this will be for both me and my daughter, knowing that she is prepared. And by the way, I do read your column because I LOVE what you write (useful to the nth degree) and I LOVE how you write it (brilliantly).
Duana’s response:
Thank you and I wish you great success in helping your daughter navigate peer pressure as she grows up.
Cheers,
Duana
The resources for this week’s entry, including scientists, studies, and related LoveScience articles, are referenced throughout the piece.
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