Our eldest daughter recently turned 15. She is a parent's delight in pretty much every way. She respects her folks and (most of the time!) treats her little sister well. She is consistently an excellent student and adults who get to know her are impressed with both her sense of responsibility and her maturity.Mostly, we live a drama-free existence. There are a few exceptions. She is the Captain of her soccer team and a couple of girls on the team resent that as she is not as athletically gifted as they are. Also her little sister (age 11) completely idolizes her which our 15 year old absolutely loves half the time and absolutely hates the other half of the time. Other than that, life is amazingly calm and happy at our house (yes, we are blessed!).Our daughter has a lot of friends, both female and male. They tend to hang around our house (yeah, I feed them!) so we know them pretty well and it's entertaining to watch them interact. She's had crushes on a couple of boys but none have risen to the level of "boyfriend" and she doesn't yet seem interested in dating.We try to keep open communications with our daughters. One day, when our eldest was in 7th grade, I came home unexpectedly early from a trip to the grocery. I discovered her masturbating in her room. Things were a little awkward for a day or two. When she started showing her face again, we sat down and discussed it. I explained that many girls masturbate and there is nothing wrong with it, but I reminded her that there is a door on her bedroom and it was sometimes a good idea to close it. The talk went well and in the end it was a good ice-breaker as she has been surprisingly open in asking questions and talking about sex and relationships ever since.When our daughter started high school my husband and I took a walk with her and had a general discussion about responsibilities around safe sex, STDs, pregnancy, etc. We ended the talk by telling her that, if she ever decided that it was a good idea for her to go on birth control, we would work with her and her doctor to make that happen. We were quite surprised when, about a week later, she came to us and said that she wanted to go on birth control to prepare for the future and to take responsibility for her own body. So ... she's been on the pill for the last couple of years and I also accompanied her as she bought a box of condoms. To the best of our knowledge she's still not sexually active. (We're pretty certain that we would know ... she is extremely open about sharing pretty much all aspects of her life with both of us).A few days ago she surprised us again. She told me that she'd used an Amazon gift certificate that she'd received for her birthday to order a vibrator. I'm not sure what a parent is supposed to say when told that so I just blurted out the first thing that came to my mind ... "When you send Grandma a thank you note for her birthday gift you might not want to be particularly detailed in your description...".That night, my husband and I discussed what she had said. We don't have any problem with our daughter owning a vibrator but we tried to decide what made her share that with us. We considered the possibilities ... she might be trying to shock us, she might be trying to open a discussion to tell us something else or maybe she was just trying to show her independence and maturity. In the end, we decided the primary motivation was probably none of those. We decided that the most likely explanation is that our daughter is just a very open person and she didn't want us to be surprised by anything.I think we missed this lesson when we attended that Parenting 101 class!(We can't wait to see what it's like raising her little sister through adolescence!)Your thoughts? Has anyone else had a similar experience or does anyone have a kid who seems to want to share everything with his/her folks? via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2xSyE8e
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