Well, it’s happened.  My little boy has discovered girls.  Oh my.  I don’t think I’m ready for this.  He’ll be 11 next month – fifth grade.  I keep telling myself that I’d had like 300 boyfriends by the time I hit 5th grade.  Understand the definition here though:  boyfriend simply meant the boy who didn’t immediately gross out when he learned that I thought he was cute.  We “went together” back then.  I think they “go out” now, which cracks me up since he’s nowhere close to being allowed to go anywhere with a girl.

I should have seen it coming, but I’ll admit it came as quite a shock to me.  For weeks now he’s become concerned with how his hair looks and what he’s wearing.  This from the boy who has no issues with wearing cut-off jeans & rubber boots all summer long.  He even brushed his teeth a couple of times without being told.  That alone should have been a clue.  But my naive little mind still thinks of him as the boy who wants nothing to do with the complications of girls – who in my defense still existed up until only three weeks ago.  Two weeks ago I learned that a girl had a crush on him.  Again – my gullible mind thought “Oh…how sweet.  Poor girl.  He won’t want anything to do with that.”  Yeah…well… Last week he was complaining, but not convincingly, about how she kept following him around at a church function.  I told him that’s because she likes him.  He responded that he knew that.  So I asked “Do you like her back?” And then there it was.  He shrugged his shoulders, turned a little bit red and said, “Maybe.”  Maybe???? Seriously???  Could you repeat that???  Are you really my son???  I honestly felt like a character in a movie.  The underscore became all ominous and everything and stuff started moving in slow motion, and kind of blurred – scary since I was driving at the time.  I took a second to try and absorb what I’d just heard and then in a moment of complete terror blurted out, “I’m not ready for you to have a girlfriend.”  Brilliant.

I’ve had a few days to get used to the idea.  She keeps calling and hanging up.  Rather annoying.  I hear her & other little giggly girl voices on the other end, and oh how it takes me back to my own childhood.  I’ll allow it for only a couple more days before I deal the mean mom card.  It has led to some good conversations with my son though.  I laid down ground rules today – no phone calls out of ear-shot of mom or dad, time limit, no secrets from me, etc… He seemed ok with that.  I don’t think it’s particularly serious on his end, but it’s the beginning of something.  I realize that.

My little boy is growing up.  It’s funny how in the process of parenting we sort of re-live our own childhoods.  I keep remembering my early romances – and heartbreaks.  There were many.  As scary as it is to know he has a “girlfriend”, it’s even scarier to think of how he’ll feel when his heart gets broken, and it will happen – if not in this relationship, then sometime.  A million questions and doubts go through my mind.  Have we prepared him for this?  How much room do we let him have?  Is it against the law to threaten an eleven year old girl who hurts your son?  And so on… The parenting books don’t prepare you for this.  At least I can’t imagine they would.  I never actually read one.  But even if they do, I’m sure they don’t do the anxiety level justice.

So he talked to his “girlfriend” on the phone today for about 5 minutes.  To my delight though, he’s played in the dirt every other moment of the afternoon and evening, so my little boy does still exist – only slightly tainted by the lure of what’s to come.  Something tells me that I’ll be encouraging the dirt playing more this summer and be far less concerned about the mess it makes.  Someone told me once that it’s a lot easier to sooth a scraped knee than to mend a broken heart.  That has suddenly taken on great meaning to me.  I’ll take the knees for a few more years please…