My 8 year-old has a Crush!?

“Kathleen, my kid is only 8 years-old? I didn’t think crushes happened until at least the pre-teen years! What do I do? I wanna be supportive, but I don’t think they need to be dating or kissing just yet.” -Concerned Mom

Let’s chat about puppy love, crushes, getting married at school and all things we as adults view as part of the dating world! It’s such a common occurrence yet as parents we have no idea how to support our kid’s crush! Some parents just want to ignore it for a bit so that it has time to fizzle out while other parents want to support their kid’s feelings but are unsure how to do that.

Between the ages of 2 and 5 years-old, many parents think it’s cute to see kids hugging one another and acting like a “married couple” but then between the ages of 6-10 years-old parents want their kids to avoid all that lovey-dovey stuff. How is a kid supposed to reconcile this!? They saw you be supportive of affection when they were younger and now you are uncomfortable with the idea. What happened? What changed?

Because each of your family’s values and beliefs are different around when dating, marriage, and sex is acceptable to do - I’m going to focus here on explaining why feelings of crushes start to happen before puberty occurs and give you tips on how to navigate these talks with your Intermediate age kid (ages 7,8,9).