Secret Crush

My daughter has a HUGE crush on a boy at school. She has been drawing hearts and writing their names together for weeks now. Until recently, she has kept her secret crush to herself and felt too shy to do much about it. The other day, she told one of her friends and showed her the heart drawings. Eventually, the boy saw some of the drawings--my daughter was embarrassed at first but later was glad to finally get her crush out in the open. As it turns out, he had a crush on her, too! So now, they both "like each other"--still very innocent at this point, but now I have to worry about what comes next. She just turned 13--there is SO much to learn about dating and the world of boys!! Her dad has said that she is not allowed to have boyfriends yet or go on dates--not even parent-supervised dates. She keeps begging him to ease up a bit about this--she is "Daddy's little girl" so he isn't about to ease up on her about dating and boys. As her mother, I also worry about these things--however, I remember what it was like to be a teenage girl. My dating life (at least boyfriend/kissing/supervised dating life) began when I was 14. Everything stayed casual and fairly innocent for a while--it was neat to have a boyfriend, write notes to each other, hold hands, sneak a few kisses every now and then. Later, when it progressed to car dating/making out/"going together"/"breaking up"--all of the ups and downs of teen love--THAT is the stage that worries me. I wonder if the first stage--the more innocent stage--is delayed, does that mean the later stages occur later, too? I don't know--some girls just jump right into the dating scene full force. However, I wonder if letting her begin the innocent stage automatically opens the door to further stages. The truth is, we can forbid her to do things, but we cannot control her feelings--if she likes a boy and he likes her, what can we do about that other than say: you can't talk on the phone to him and definitely can't meet him anywhere. How much control can we REALLY have about this? Right now, it is all innocent and kind of cute--she is all smiles and just looks at his pictures and melts! :) But what is next?--and when? We cannot deny that she is maturing and this is very much part of that--we cannot keep her an innocent little girl who doesn't notice boys. She began commenting about cute boys around 9 years old--this is the first time she has been brave enough to actually share her feelings with the boy. It took a while for this all to come to fruition--I just hope it takes a long time for these innocent crushes to progress to love and dating. One day, my daughter will be a grown woman who will fall in love, get married, have kids, etc.--I will be very happy for her during those stages, but I would LOVE to see her go VERY slow between this innocent crush stage and those later stages. I'm sharing her smiles right now--and I will be there for her when she sheds tears over boys--and I will try to guide her through the dating scene as she matures. But for now, lets just enjoy this sweet innocent crush stage for as long as possible! :)