January 30,2018
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The Ridgewood Stigma Free task force announces that February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. More than 1 in 10 teens who have been on a date have also been physically abused by a boyfriend or girlfriend in the last year. Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month is a national effort to raise awareness and protect teens from violence.
You can make a difference: Encourage schools, community-based organizations, parents, and teens to come together to prevent teen dating violence. It is vitally important that we specifically speak to and understand the statistics involved with abuse in young people’s relationships. These statistics help to outline just how widespread of an issue dating abuse really is in the lives of young people.
Being able to tell the difference between healthy, unhealthy and abusive relationships can be more difficult than you would think. No two relationships are the same, so what’s unhealthy in one relationship may be abusive in another. Although there are many signs to pay attention to in a relationship, look for these common warning signs of dating abuse:
• Checking cell phones, emails or social networks without permission
• Extreme jealousy or insecurity
• Constant belittling or put-downs
• Explosive temper
• Isolation from family and friends
• Making false accusations
• Erratic mood swings
• Physically inflicting pain or hurt in any way
• Possessiveness
• Telling someone what to do
• Repeatedly pressuring someone to have sex
February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. The Ridgewood Stigma Free task force wants you to know that there’s a lot you can do as a parent to prevent teen dating violence and abuse. Remember that more than 1 in 10 teens who have been on a date have also been physically abused by a boyfriend or girlfriend in the last year. One of the most important things you can do is keep the lines of communication open with your kids.
Take steps to make a difference:
• Be a role model – treat your kids and others with respect.
• Start talking to your kids about healthy relationships early – before they start dating.
• Get involved with efforts to prevent dating violence at your teen’s school.
• If you are worried about your teen, call the National Dating Abuse Helpline at 1-866-331-9474 or text “loveis” to 22522.
You can help keep your loved ones safe and healthy.
So can we put the kibosh on keeping company? Stop acting like you’re married when you’re not.
Huh 1:11??
Catholic Doctrine on “Dating” or “Keeping Company”
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Catholic Morality
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When Is Company-Keeping Lawful?
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The question in the above title is one about which there is much confusion today, not only in the minds of young people themselves, but in the minds of many of their parents, teachers and interested elders. The confusion arises from the fact that solid ethical principles no longer enter into the thinking of thousands of people. Much of modern education scoffs at the very idea that the human mind can come to any convincing conclusions about ethics, morality or religion. It is to be expected, therefore, that many will be induced to follow their instincts and their inclinations, especially in a matter so strongly and universally appealing to naked and tainted instincts as company-keeping.
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Nevertheless there are sound moral principles to be applied to the lawfulness of company-keeping, and all who have retained respect for their reason and some basic Christian faith must want to know what they are and then to get together in applying them to their own lives and teaching them in the areas reached by their influence. The subject should be of special concern to parents, teachers, youth leaders and, of course, to all, young and old, who are in a position to be attracted to any form of company-keeping.
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By company-keeping in this treatise we mean steady, concentrated, exclusive association between two people of different sexes. Such steady and exclusive association between man and woman is accepted by all the world to mean that the man is “courting” the woman, and that she is permitting herself to be courted. Thus, if a boy takes a girl out once or twice or oftener a week over a period of time, and it is therefore clear to all who know them that he is concentrating on her, these two are keeping company, whether they are willing to call it that or not. If a lad in the ninth grade is sweet on a little girl in the same grade and takes her to a show or some other evening event at least once a week, they are keeping company whether their elders laugh it off as innocent puppy love or not.
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There are two factors that must be considered in setting down moral principles with regard to company-keeping. The first is that its purpose, as evident universally in the direction toward which company-keeping leads, is possible future marriage. This does not mean that when one starts keeping steady company with someone, he or she is thereby at once committed to marriage with that person. A period of steady company-keeping may in time bring about the discovery that marriage to the particular companion involved is out of the question. Even in that case it will have fulfilled its ethical purpose as a testing or trying out period for marriage. But the idea of possible marriage can never be excluded from steady company-keeping.
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The second factor on which the moral principles governing company-keeping are based is even more important. It is the fact that company-keeping between a man and a woman or a boy and a girl involves a certain amount of unavoidable danger or inclination to sin. From the very nature of human beings this danger can be perceived. In all normal men and women God has implanted a strong instinct toward marriage and the things of marriage, i.e., the pleasures connected with marriage. The purpose of this instinct is to lead them, in favourable and right circumstances, toward and into marriage, where these inclinations can be virtuously satisfied and through them God’s purposes of continuing the human race fulfilled. However the inclinations themselves have no power to recognize this wonderful plan that is so clear to the reason. They make themselves felt with increasing fervor, the longer company-keeping goes on. In that fact lies the danger of company-keeping, and experience proves that it is no merely theoretical danger. In short, the danger is that the inclinations of company-keepers may induce them to do things that their reason and faith tell them are lawful only in marriage.