A slightly different thought in the direction of babysitting. Can you get her to do some babysitting? Paid or unpaid, although paid would be preferable because then it wouldn't feel like punishment. But the unpaid could be done first, call it "training" or "apprenticeship". She can also indulge her need for love of a kid, by loving a child she has to care for. Or tutoring - can she tutor a younger child in, say, reading or simple maths? All the skills she will need as a mother, she will need to learn.
We live in an increasingly nucelar society. We don't have the extended family experiences we used to, in the days of tribal living. Instead, we have parents (often only one), grandparents are far less on the scene to teach by example and share their wisdom, and we have fewer children in the family so we have fewer siblings to learn from. We don't have numerous cousins underfoot, either.
So how on earth can our kids learn how to be parents, except from what they themselves received? It's just not as much as it used to be.
I grew up desperate for the day when I could be a mother. But I waslucky - my sister lived next door, plus other sisters visited for long periods, so I got plenty of hands-on experience with nieces and nephews. I would take them for long walks, I would teach them about the world, about nature, about the world around us and we would talk. My sister bottle-fed her kids so she handed them over to me from a very young age. I was a very inexperienced but constantly unpaid babysitter. Those kids filled an importnt niche in my life.
A song by an Aussie folk singer Judy Small, "Maiden Aunt", tells of the joys of playing with other people's kids and the extra joy of giving them back at night. Judy loves kids, but has none of her own. A number of her songs are about some wonderful things she does with children in her life, including the "Manly Ferry Song" which describes a lovely day going to the beach on a Sunday with a young girl she knows. That young girl played the kazoo on the record album that has that song.
So maybe if she says she wants to ahve a baby at 15, tell her that you want her to be able to achieve that dream but do it with confidence; which is going to require a lot more experience. And learning now, before she is pregnant, is what is needed because it's much harder to pick up a toddler and change a dirty nappy when you've got morning sickness or are too huge from a pregnant belly. Sciatica hurts when you have to carry a big kid on a pregnant hip.
Another option for her to consider - what life career does she want to aim for, if she wants to have kids young? Teaching is a good career path because you're on holidays when the kids are. You might stll have work to do, but you can do it at home. So now, before she gets pregnant, is the time to work on that potential career path. It's a lot harder to study after you have kids. Again, I speak from experience. Trying to keep my babies quiet at the back of the lecture hall was tricky (I used an old phone book and let them rip it to pieces, then cleaned up the shredded paper later). Finding out that my apparently supportive lecturer who had said, "sure, bring your kids along!" was marking me as absent for every class I had the kids, made me really angry. But when you have kids, especially if you're a young mother, people (especially men) can treat you like your brains are permanently on vacation.
So who do you know who has a young baby who could use a break? Your daughter will enjoy having someone look at her with gratitude. And it should open her eyes. If she comes home form her first session convinced she wants a young baby, don't be alarmed. Just keep it up. The first episode of croup should cure her. And if not - then she will be a much more capable young mother.
Marg
Reality testing, anyone? Sigh...
