Before They Date, Court, or Whatever You Call it

Recently, my wife received a message asking about our relationship guidelines for our teen children. Here is the question slightly paraphrased:

I noticed in one of Michael's posts that you and your husband met in high school. I grew up in the "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" generation and always assumed I would steer my girls away from dating entirely until after graduation. But I keep coming across stories of healthy, marriage-bound relationships that started in high school, and it has me reconsidering whether there might be situations where that is not such a bad thing. Given your own story, I am curious what guidelines you have landed on for your kids, and how you would counsel a daughter in high school if a genuinely worthy young man, also in high school, took an interest in her.

Emily had a little bit of a back and forth with her and more or less laid out what I am about to lay out here. For simplicity's sake, I wrote “I,” but it really is “we.” So here are some of our guidelines…