No hugs, no holding of hands, no touching or other public displays of affection (PDA) allowed at Fossil Hill Middle School in Fort Worth. Actually, what is true in the Keller ISD is pretty much the rule in most middle and elementary schools. Principal David Hadley says surely parents don’t want their 11, 12 and 13 year olds holding hands and kissing in school, do they? Well, as a parent I can tell you “certainly not.”
A viewer wrote me a few moments ago and said, “when I was in the 8th grade back in 1968, we could never get away with PDA in school.” She went on to write she lives just 2 blocks from Fossil Hill Middle School “and some of the behavior of these kids as they walk by my house is pretty gross. Maybe I need to start a petition to make parents responsible for their kids behavior-that’s a novel idea.”
I must agree! Where is the common sense here? More importantly, where are the parents here? I don’t want to pick a fight with the parents of the 8th grader in our story, but do you really want your daughter hugging and kissing in school? Do you want her exposed to other students engaging in that kind of behavior in school? The young lady says her parents support her petition drive to reverse the school’s anti PDA policy. I am not a prude, this is the age that hormones start raging and children begin experimenting. But, do you want them experimenting at school, in middle school grades?
There is so little innocence today anyway, our children are exposed to so much by television and the internet, and allowing PDA in our lower schools is just plain distracting, and in my opinion, inappropriate. This is not a “majority rules” issue, this is a common sense and good parenting issue. If a parent deems it appropriate to allow their 8th grader to hold hands with a date at the movie theater or Micky D’s, that is their decision. What happens when that hand holding becomes heavy petting? As Dr. Phil might ask, “how’s that working out for you?”
For me, we can’t control much of what goes on in general public areas, like movie theaters, but we certainly can make an effort to assert influence on what goes on in our schools. Those anti PDA rules are just part of the policies designed to encourage good decision making. Maybe if we discourage PDA at that tender age in middle school, maybe we can encourage our children to put off experimenting with more aggressive sexual behavior until they truly understand the consequences.
