When Ainsley was younger, I suppose I was more naive and optimistic about my powers as a parent. Now that she’s nearing nine, I have the benefit of getting used to the idea of my own powerlessness.
Of course, I have a great deal of influence in her life and over activities she participates in, media she’s exposed to, that sort of thing.
But, there is a great deal about her self and her life that I am ultimately powerless over. It’s like when your baby is born and you’d always intended to have a blond baby and out she comes sporting bold black or red hair. For some reason, you weren’t expecting it and don’t really know how to respond.
I find in myself, and in conversations with other mothers online and off, that a lot of what we hold to be true as mothers is framed in our own personal experience as girls.
For instance, I got my period when I was 12, had to beg for a bra so I wouldn’t be the only 7th grader in the locker room without one. That was also the year I began shaving my legs, wearing make-up, pierced my ears, curled my hair and was devastated because I wasn’t allowed Liz Claiborne perfume and a Guess watch. Being 12 was HUGE in my own personal coming-of-age experience.
Yet, a generation later, girls mature faster. Lots of things go faster, change faster, develop faster. Cursive may, in fact, be obsolete as my 8-year-old just bought her own pink 7″ mini computer money she’s saved.
Puberty is happening faster in white girls by several years. As a mother, it has taken some getting used to that idea. We don’t know why. Scientists, doctors, researchers don’t know why. I’ve researched and reported on it a lot on The Girl Revolution, mainly in an attempt to understand how to prevent this from happening to MY child. Yet, all the sudden – as I come face to face with the reality, some things don’t seem to be relevant anymore.
What happened when we were girls – personally or collectively – is irrelevant.
As a group, generally girls want to stay inside the norm. If the norm changes, but you keep up with it, you’ll probably make out okay. So, if you’re the ONLY kid in your class who doesn’t develop a few years earlier this generation that is probably the occurrence that will be emotionally and socially damaging. To develop earlier than your mother, but at the same rate as the other kids in your age-range, will be the most comforting pace for most girls. Why should SHE care when YOU got boobs?
I wasn’t allowed to have a phone in my room. There was altogether too much privacy in that idea. Yet, I’m probably going to give Ainsley a cell line within the next several months. It makes sense TODAY.
Frankly, I didn’t expect this yet. But, I have yet to make any headway in stopping it, holding it off or reversing it. Some things, I’ve accepted, are beyond my control. One can eradicate BPAs from the home, eliminate hormones in milk, reduce exposure to media, visit physicians, and pray a lot and still, one must surrender to the fact that parents don’t control their children’s physical development.
It really is irrelevant that I didn’t need a bra till I was 12, that I didn’t start my period until after 6th grade, that I didn’t use deodorant or shave my legs until 7th grade. It really doesn’t make any difference to HER experience. I’m positive my parents made these decisions based on the culture we lived in – a predominantly Mormon one, in which this was also the timing of most of the other kids.
What matters in her experience is what other kids are doing now, what is safe and healthy, what she’s emotionally ready for, what the desires of her heart are and what is currently socially acceptable today.
This is her life. Her development and her experience. My job is not to determine the timing of the experience. My job is to support her through whatever her experience turns out to be. My job is the same as every generation of mothers and only the timing is different – to pass on Feminine Wisdom.
Given one single wish, that he gets to make in front of the best and brightest people with all the resources in the world, he chose to confront the childhood obesity epidemic armed with information and education.
According to an article, Puberty gap: Obesity splits boys, girls on MSNBC.com, new studies have indicated that the current obesity epidemic among children is causing boys to hit puberty later than previous generations.
Girls appear to be hitting puberty one to two years earlier than previous generations.
Theories on what might cause late puberty in overweight boys center on hormones produced in fat cells. Obese males have higher levels of estradiol, a relative of estrogen that may interfere with the male hormone androgen, states the article.
One doctor also provides parents with the solution to early or late puberty in their children:
At a time when so many children are overweight, parents should be more concerned about obesity than puberty, said Dr. Laura K. Bachrach, a professor of pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
“They should be worried about the food they’re putting on the table.”
President Barack Obama announced that Michelle Obama, First Lady and mother of two First Daughters Sasha and Malia, will be taking on Childhood Obesity as her pet cause. In this MSNBC story Michelle Obama admits to a very similar story as the one I’ve told here on The Girl Revolution – the doctor says, “Hey your kids are in a risky place BMI-wise.”
I could not have been more thrilled. You know, Tribe, that I am very concerned with the negative consequences resulting from apathetically allowing obesity to consume our daughters: early puberty, higher insurance premiums, preexisting conditions like diabetes, higher risks of breast cancer, infertility, and those are just the gender-specific risks.
I recently read an article in The New Yorker about the fact that the military is having a problem finding youth who meet the physical requirements of enlisting to defend our country. It’s never happened before in the history of America.
I remind my own kids, “Did you get your hour of play today?”
From the MSNBC article, Michelle tells us how she handle the shocking news that her daughters were too high on the BMI charts,
‘Small changes, big results’
The first lady said that over the next few months she made some small changes that got her daughters back on track. No more weekday TV. More attention to portion sizes. Low-fat milk. Water bottles in the lunch boxes. Grapes on the breakfast table. Apple slices at lunch. Colorful vegetables on the dinner table. “It was really very minor stuff, but these small changes resulted in some really significant improvements, and I didn’t know it would,” Mrs. Obama said.
It’s true. Small changes do lead to big results. I know it from my own health, my kids’ health, my lifestyle changes. Small changes are easy and achievable and if you do them often enough you do get big lifestyle changes.
I am so happy children will have a champion for the very important cause of childhood obesity. There could not be a more visible champion.
There’s more to this childhood obesity epidemic than our kids are too lazy, we’re not good enough police about what goes in our kids mouths and our little people don’t get enough play and exercise though.
I just saw Food, Inc. on the Watch It Now feature on Netflix.
It really highlights facts like these: if all the animals we eat consume corn and they feed them corn to make them fatter faster . . . .does it surprise us then that we and our children are also fatter faster? Not to mention all the other products, around 80% of what’s in the grocery store, are made of . . . corn, corn syrup, and other corn sugars?
Food, Inc. does one thing well. Outline just how seriously our government is involved in what we’re eating – which flows into the rising costs in our inefficient health care system – and just how much influence a few Corporations have over our childhood obesity problem, our national obesity problem.
Happily, and the movie highlights this truth very well in the end: it is ultimately CONSUMERS (read parents who buy their kids’ foods) who decide what supermarkets carry, what farmers farm and what corporations sell.
If you’re feeling a little powerless as you fork over the extra dough for the healthier foods let me point out one tiny little trend which should raise your feelings of empowerment: When I began writing about the issue of early puberty the issue of hormones in the milk supply came up, non-hormone milk cost quite a bit more than milk from cows given growth hormones. It was worth it. Not just to me, but to enough people that Walmart – the biggest retailer in the world – doesn’t carry growth hormone milk anymore. They don’t even stock it.
We – PARENTS, CONSUMERS – stopped the practice of feeding growth hormones to milk cows by refusing to buy that milk.
That’s how capitalism works every.single.time.
Next on the chopping block – high fructose corn syrup, a product that’s probably in 80% of the food supply and that’s making us and our kids fatter faster.
Michelle said she plans to roll out her childhood obesity campaign over the next few weeks. I am sure she’ll be planting the garden in the spring too. I can’t wait!
Listen, I took some slack for The Girl Revolution: Fit Girl Series I ran last year. Too obsessive, one reader said in her email.
The thing is, childhood obesity has very serious health consequences for our children. Especially for our daughters who reach puberty between 100 and 110 pounds, whether that happens at 6 or 12. Outward signs of puberty are beginning in some girls as early as 6 and still being considered medically normal.
You know, and I know, that we have listened to adult men claim they have a right to have sex with children because they look older than they are, “She looked like a grown up, look what she was wearing!” I’m ashamed to say which of my own friends and family members have said this about junior high girls.
We’ve listened to this disgusting and inexcusable line from men who have sex with 12-18 year olds.
These girls’ crimes? They grew breasts. Visible signs of “looking older.”
Nothing cultural has changed – men are still using this piss-poor excuse for inexcusable behavior, and we’re still letting them get away with it because the girls look “sexual” as soon as breasts appear on their bodies. But now girls are looking older earlier than ever before it’s time to decide whether we’ve heard enough “she looked older” B.S.
You tell me if it’s a serious concern that 8-year-olds develop breasts because they are gaining weight too fast. Think back: bra snapping, cat calls, harassment in school, older men asking if you “need a ride,” inappropriate touching, sexual name-calling, attempts to seduce, etc. Yeah, you were there.
Add to that the serious concerns about future breast cancer risks (increases if she starts her period early, doesn’t have a child before age 30 and doesn’t breast feed), diabetes, rising health care costs, pre-existing conditions of the health insurance industry (they’re blatantly rejecting obese children).
Tribe, we have a problem that needs serious addressing.
Visit the Obesity Thunder website to see all sorts of videos around the issue.
