Tiger Beat - August 1970 (typed by Carol R.)

Your Fave Answers You - Bobby Sherman
As Told to Linda Strom, Fave Reporter

Your teen years are the most exciting of your life. It's a time of new discoveries about loving, living and relationships with other people. You are experiencing feelings you never had before - falling in love for the first time, and having your very first heartbreaks, too. Your faves have all been through the same things, and many of you write to them with your problems when you are unhappy because you love and trust them. Every month, we will print one letter that was sent to a star and have him give you his advice. So, if you've got a special problem you'd like to talk over with your fave, write to: Your Fave Answers You, c/o Your Fave's Name, FaVE Magazine, 1800 N. Highland Avenue, Hollywood, California 90028. We'll make sure he receives it!

Dear Bobby,

I am fifteen years old and in the tenth grade, and I have a real problem. My parents don't trust me!

It doesn't matter what I do, they always think I'm doing something wrong. Whenever I go someplace, my parents always question me about the people I'm going with and the place I'm going to. I respect them about this to a certain point, but when they want to know the EXACT time I'll be home — well, forget it!

When I go out with a boy, the whole family greets him at the door and gives him an inquisition, and when I come home they're always waiting up for me with all the lights on...and sometimes they're even standing on the porch!

I find that I have to sneak around to meet my boyfriend sometimes because they won't let me go out very often. I'd like to invite him over, but they all but stand in front of us, making sure we won't do anything wrong.

I can't stand it anymore. I know that my friends are getting tired of having to treat me like I had the plague or something, and I'm afraid pretty soon they won't put up with it anymore. I mean, what boy is going to date a girl whose parents make him feel like a criminal? Help.

Michelle S.
New Orleans, La.

Dear Michelle,

I know how upset you must be with your parents. If you've never done anything wrong and you're always treated like an escapee from a reform school, it's difficult to lead a calm life.

If it will help you any, I want to tell you that you're not alone. A lot of girls have your special problem. I think girls have lots of mistrust heaped on them more than boys do because girls are supposed to be timid little things who really can't take care of themselves in a pinch. At least, that's how parents seem to look at it. You see, it wasn't so long ago that your father was handing out cigars for his baby daughter. So it's hard for him to realize you're a big girl who can usually take care of herself.

IT'S YOUR PARENTS' PROBLEM TOO! The most important thing you have to realize about your problem is that it isn't so much your problem as your parents' problem.

They're not really certain that they've done all they could in raising your correctly. To trust you whenever you go out is really, when you come right down to it, a trust of their ability as parents.

So you must take this into consideration before you get mad at them. Can you put yourself in their place and see how they might feel? It's a tremendous responsibility, shaping and molding and teaching another human being - especially a daughter - about life.

So with this in mind, Michelle, you can handle your parents' mistrust of you with a clearer picture of why they act this way.