By Carolyn West
I live in a house full of girls. Actually, I live in a house full of three girls and one guy. That guy? My husband. He’s not too happy to be living in a house full of girls.
Boys, admittedly, get a bad wrap. They are wilder, harder to potty train, break things, get dirty and have stinky rooms. Girls, on the other hand, are supposed to be sweet and loving and like to wear pretty pink clothes. For the most part, this is true. Until puberty.
Around the time a girl turns 9… or in my house, 6, they become these little creatures you don’t recognize. While they look cute and innocent, there are hormones running rampant behind the façade. Don’t let them fool you.
My house of girls is a little like an insane asylum. There are individual rooms where little girls lurk behind closed doors doing heavens know what. When you open a door, you never know what you’re going to get.
One minute they are loving and devoted daughters. The next minute they are banshees screaming at you and clawing to get out. This is the face of a tween.
By DeAnna L’am
One of my mentors said to me many years ago:
“It’s great to work on cleaning the barn, but don’t forget to RIDE THE PONIES!”
When I heard myself sounding like an old tape-recorder reminding my daughter Ellah (9) of simple things she needs to do every day, I decided to start taking walks with her.
Are you so busy reminding your girl of her homework/chores/the need to get-out-of-the-door, that you don’t have time to enjoy her anymore??? If you wonder where did all the joy go, now that your girl is approaching puberty, read on…
We bundle up every morning before school, and go for our special time together. We pause as we enter the walking trail, and thank Mother Earth for her beauty. While Ellah skips, hops, and jumps around me, I take my “power walk.” We invent little songs and pacing-rhymes; we open our eyes to see the skies, our ears to listen to birds, and our hearts to take in the beauty. I enjoy my daughter’s company immensely on these walks, as well as get my exercise!
How can you implement this with your girl (or children)?
Your daughter will soon be entering (or recently has entered) an exciting stage in her life. Essentially she is crossing the threshold between the girl she has been and the woman she will become. Thanks to hormones, everything will be changing: physically, emotionally, cognitively and even socially. You can be assured that with a little knowledge, open and frequent communication, and lots of love, you and your daughter will grow closer and closer as you navigate this new stage of life together.
Being prepared is the best way to ensure that your daughter has a positive experience whenever her first period begins.
What’s Happening in Her Body?
Menstruation is a cycle in the female body that allows fertilization or pregnancy to happen. Your daughter’s first menstrual cycle begins when her ovaries release hormones, which signal the lining of the womb to thicken, preparing a place for a fertilized egg to grow. The pituitary gland also sends a hormonal signal to the ovaries, who then release an egg or ovum. This is called ovulation and happens in the middle of the cycle. The egg floats down the fallopian tube on a path to the uterus.
Are you screaming inside, “PLEASE…SOMEONE…help me with my teenager!” Do you ever get the feeling that your daughter hates you? Or that once a month, you have no idea how to deal with her. One minute the two of you are laughing and the next – your kindhearted jab about her clothes sends her reeling to her room in tears.
If your daughter’s mood swings can sometimes give you whiplash, you might be experiencing what is called PMS: pre-menstrual syndrome. And if you think its bad for you – you only know the half of how bad it is for your daughter.
Truth is, that PMS is real.
Due to hormonal surges before a female gets her period, she can suffer from a calamity of symptoms. Often times, PMS comes in the form of physical symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, bloatedness, sore breasts, muscle aches, and food cravings. And even more often, PMS serves up some pretty severe emotional reactions which can range from sadness and anxiety to anger, frustration, and difficulty focusing.
By Jessica Drummond, MPT, CCN, CHC
Isn’t it funny that God designed moms to hit menopause just as their daughters are hitting puberty. (Well, actually, I guess we’ve designed it that way, since now many of us are having our children well into our perimenopausal years. But, wait… My grandmother had her last child at 40. So, I don’t know who to blame!)
Think about that for a moment.
Just when you’re feeling even worse about your body, the perimenopausal belly fat, the sagging well-past-breastfeeding breasts, the bits of gray hair, the middle aged acne, all combined with the fatigue that comes from raising tweens and burning the candle at both ends for the last 3 decades, it’s your job to combat 6000 negative media messages everyday about the unattainable perfect female body! Ugh. READ MORE… »
The similarities between puberty and menopause are vast. Think about it. Teens who are reaching puberty deal with acne, fluctuating hormones, body shape changes, irregular menses, growing pains and fatigue. Similarly, women going through peri-menopause or menopause are sometimes afflicted with mood swings, joint aches, the inability to concentrate, skin eruptions and mind-numbing exhaustion.
As women wait longer to have children, their menopause is more often coinciding with the onset of puberty in their children. The question, then becomes who just slammed the door and began sobbing? was it mother or daughter?
Coinciding hormonal transitions can result in tiresome bickering and cause extra strain on the entire family. While it’s difficult to achieve complete serenity in a house where hormones are colliding, there are measures that can be taken by both mother and daughter to ease tension. The following are a good place to start:
By Gina Badalaty
6 Keys to Help You Teach Your Special Needs Daughter about Puberty
One of the more challenging aspects of raising a daughter with special needs is teaching her about puberty. This year my 9 year old, Amelia, started showing the earliest signs of puberty. I panicked, but after I calmed down, I came up with a practical plan on how I would teach her. In developing my plan, I discovered six keys that can help you take the right approach to teaching your daughter about puberty.
1. Communication.
If your child has a speech disability, or is unable to understand you, you must find another way to communicate what puberty is all about. This can entail a variety of methods. A good book can help, or you may need to find a picture exchange system (PECS) or social story based specifically on puberty. If not, look around for good images and create your own PECS or social story tailored to your child’s needs. We use the American Girl book, “The Care and Keeping of You,” which Amelia likes very much. (Note: it is very graphic.)
I was 13 when I got my period and although it was 33 years ago, what I remember most about that day is how lonely I felt. Menstruation wasn’t something discussed among friends, much less at home. I was prepared in the literal sense. I had a box of pads under my bathroom sink and I knew I would bleed and what to do about it. Still, I wasn’t prepared emotionally. Facts weren’t very helpful when I felt like nobody understood and nobody wanted to talk about it.
When I found myself the mother of not one, but three daughters, I knew it would be up to me to make sure they were not only physically prepared for whatever life threw at them, but emotionally prepared as well. From the time they were born, I made it a point to talk to my girls. We talk about everything… from school to friends to puberty and even those darn boys. I always knew that talking and being open and honest with them was going to be the answer to raising smart, secure and self-confident children. I never wanted my kids to feel they couldn’t come to me and ask questions, or talk, or tell me how they were feeling. READ MORE… »