There is a person in my life who is entirely blind sided by her children. She has a very open relationship with her kids, they can talk about anything. This is great. But they also have a very protective relationship over their children, with a lot of expectations of them. It particularly evident in their restrictions upon dating.
We are little more open to "dating" than they are.
One of the things that has begun to happen is that their eldest daughter is finding ways to get around their rules and restrictions. One of these methods to help her stay under the radar is by throwing my daughter under the bus.
You see, she knows all the right "Christian" things to say to her parents to get their trust and respect. She talks about not wanting to date. She even points her finger at my daughter and says that she doesn't want to be "boy crazy" like her. (Mind you, my daughter is hardly boy crazy). Her parents believe her. And so they trust her.
It happened not that long ago that their daughter invited herself to a sleepover at our house. The girls plans were to go to the mall the next day and "window shop". Then my daughter suddenly canceled the plans. This was very out of character for her. When I was finally able to get the reason from her, I found out that her friend was using us. She was the one who really wanted to go to the mall, and she was planning to "accidentally" run into a boy there. A boy she really likes.
The same boy she has been selling to her parents as a "nice guy, but not my type".
Several months later, I found a few note books in the trash. I was checking them to see if they were full or if there was any paper still left. This is pretty common from school. They will have a notebook or composition book and only use about 1/3 of it. We tear out the pages and the kids use it around the house for journals, sketching, etc.
It happened that one of them my daughter had started to use as a journal. I couldn't help it, I read it.
In it she was lamenting about how her friend's mom sees her as some sort of boy crazy "slut" but in fact her friend has had more "boyfriends" and had "done more things with boys" than she had. She went on about the cancelled sleepover & how she didn't want to be involved in deceiving her friends mom. She didn't want to be blamed as a bad influence. She didn't her friend using her. She didn't want to potentially hurt the relationship between this mom and I, by putting me in this position.
I was really proud of my daughter, she recognized these things & made the right decision to protect herself and her family. I was really sad for this girl, because I know where lies and deception can get you. And I was hurt that my daughter recognized this woman as someone who looked down on us, all while calling us friends. She knew her friend's mom saw her in an unflattering light.
Ladies, parents... lets be very real. Our children know us. They know what to say, what we want to hear. If we don't keep at least a small dose of skepticism in our trust of them.... we are going to be blindsided.
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