Excellent.

This speaks to me because I’ve been trying to work out what to say to my teenage nieces.

Don’t get me wrong, I know what I *want* to say, I dealt with it all pretty much as you have written here with my own child, with lots of openness and respect.

However, I worry a little about my nieces, their parents aren’t quite as forthright and accepting as I am — and they’re no doubt getting incomplete, skewed or blatantly prejudiced information and advice from school, friends, the internet.

(Not that everything on the internet is to be avoided. There’s some really good sites out there — for example scarleteen.com is one I like — , but it helps to have someone point you in the right direction otherwise you will find yourself floundering around and out of your depth in a murky swamp, more likely than not!).

Anyway, I’m not ..on the best of terms (shall we say) with the nieces parents. Simply put, they don’t like me, they don’t like my views on life, parenting, education, sexuality….and so on and so forth.

So *can* I talk to the girls? I would like to be there ‘go to’ person, for support, for information. I really want to be there for them ….and yet I’m wary of seeming to go against their parents and causing potential problems for my nieces by being caught up in any backlash from them.