Entries Tagged 'early puberty' ↓

“Half the 4th Grade girls have boobs and wear bras,” Ainsley reported.

“Really? Like, for real?” I asked, stunned because no one had boobs until like the 7th Grade when I was in school. “Like they really need bras?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, give me five!” I said, holding my hand out.

“Why would I give you five?” she asked

“It’s better not to be the first one to get boobs in the 4th Grade, believe me,” I informed her.

“Well, I don’t want to be the only girl without boobs,” she said.

“You’re not. You said half the class. That means half the class doesn’t have boobs.” I said.

“They are having a Bra Club. You have to have boobs to be in the club,” she reported.

“Well. Go get ready for soccer,” I said.

A few days later, as I was getting ready for bed she came into the bathroom.

“Mom? When can I shave my legs?” she asked.

“When you’re 12,” I said, because this was when I had been allowed to shave my legs and so obviously, this is the right and appropriate answer.

“All the kids make fun of my hairy legs!” she exclaimed.

“Who does?” I asked, wondering if she just uses this line because I tend to fall for it a lot.

“Sarah and the kids at soccer and when I wear shorts at school,” she claimed.

“Ainsley, shaving your legs is a real pain in the butt. Once you start your hair grows back in all stubbly and scratchy and black, it doesn’t grow back in all soft and downy like your hair is now. I’m not kidding, it’s a massive pain in the butt and you have to shave like everyday. That’s why I don’t think you should do it yet,” I explained reasonably.

“I don’t care. I don’t want all the kids making fun of me. Look at this hair! It’s embarrassing!” she yelled, showing me her admittedly hairy legs.

I looked down and rubbed her hairy legs and wondered how the hair would grow back in if we just used Nair rather than shaving them for a few years. Would they grow back in stubbly and black then?

“Go to bed Ainsley. It’s late,” I told her.

“Fine! I’ll just have everyone make fun of me and go to school embarrassed and play soccer in shorts embarrassed! You don’t care!” she yelled and slammed the door to her room.

I sighed and went to her room. I really am a sucker for the teasing and embarrassed thing,I thought as I opened her door and said into the dark, “Maybe we’ll try Nair this weekend and see what happens.”

“What’s Nair?” she asked.

“It’s this cream that dissolves hair. I don’t know how it will grow back in. But, we can try it and see,” I said.

“Okay. Thank you,” she said.

“Good night. I love you,” I said.

I shut the door. Is there really any reason that 10-year-olds were required to have hairy legs if it embarrasses them, I wondered. Is there some rule that says it has to be 12? I wonder when other parents let their kids shave their legs? 4th Grade sure isn’t what it used to be, it got a hell of a lot more complicated. 

Books such as Reviving Ophelia, Saving Beauty From the Beast, Queen Bees & Wannabes, Odd Girl Out and Girlfighting have elucidated the cultural context that puts so many adolescent girls at risk. But that’s only one part of the story. Daughters don’t become “unconscious” in the areas in which their mothers are fully conscious. Ophelia won’t need reviving if her mother has already been resuscitated—or never needed resuscitation in the first place. Beauty is less likely to fall for the Beast if her self-esteem is high and if her mother has taught her to be in touch with her instincts.

Each of us must take responsibility for the ways in which we keep “the culture” going up close and personal in our own homes and in our own lives. This is infinitely harder than blaming the culture. It is also a far more rewarding and powerful way to change the conditions of our lives—one mother and daughter at a time.

Christian Northrup, Mother-Daughter Wisdom.

Never say “dreaded period” again!

It is not dreaded. At all.

It is a lovely gift of heightened women’s intuition. It allows one’s inner wise woman to speak louder and be heard, because one feels more quiet and slow. That’s my latest theory about early puberty. That girls simply need the heightened intuition and meditative going inside that the menstrual cycle offers us a couple of years sooner, because they are bombarded with more choices, more outside influences and more media telling them the wrong things about who they really are.

The menstrual cycle is about our reproductive cycles in the sense that it comes from our second chakra, our womb space – that of CREATION – that human element of us that is most like God.

To create we have to clean out the old crap we’re holding on to and our menstrual cycles allow us to do that. PMS is the sane, oh so sane, process of recognizing shit we don’t want in our lives. We take it out on husbands and children because they are the humans who most cross our boundaries. It’s the feeling guilty about slapping those boundaries in place that makes the natural normal emotional process of PMS so horrid for us. But, the boundaries are blessings.

If you really want to go there you should check out this brilliant woman, Miranda Grey of Red Moon who writes books (and has resources for girls to implement this in their lives as well) about how to USE our menstrual periods to become more efficient and live happier lives. I have The Optimized Woman and that has both changed the way I viewed my period (which has barely registered as a nuisance in my life). It has also drastically changed the way I want to share the blessing and joy of a period with Ainsley.

She writes about how there are optimum times during the month in which women are able to do things best. She breaks it down into 4 weeks: Expressive Phase (ovulation, passive and outgoing), Creative Phase (PMS, active), Reflective Phase (menstruation, we are not more open to meditation, we literally become meditation) and the Dynamic Phase (pre-ovulation, active).

What does Ainsley need to know? That her period is about biology and that it is natural, normal, healthy and all the biology about the sperm and egg and how to manage it and take care of herself. But, more importantly, that her period is a Spiritual Gift that heightens her ability to perceive bullshit and know which course of action is best for her. That all the marketing around menstruation products – the smelliness, the grossness, the PMS medication, the weight gain, the irritability is just a load of marketing crap – meant to make her feel bad so she’ll spend more money on their products. That there are certain times when she will feel more like going out and more like being intimate, and then there are times when she’ll get a hell of a lot more done and other times, while she is on her period, when she is meant to rest, meditate, cleanse herself and go inside. Don’t fight those times. Use them to her advantage and accept them as the spiritual gifts that they are.

On Red Moon is a resource PDF for young girls, Moon Magic for Girls, to help you share the Spiritual Gift of her monthly moon cycle with her. Midol and Tampax have been around for a few decades.

A woman’s menstrual cycle has been around since the dawn of time, it’s time we go back into our sacred feminine heritage and reclaim it for ourselves and our daughters.

Hormone Martini Recipe

One part early puberty.
One part early peri-menopause.
Mix in a whopping bit of love.
Stir in some house rules in a card game, jokers wild.
Plop in some compound hormones.
Slather on some mean girls from school.
Drizzle some dark chocolate over a smashing headache.
Add a dash of bloating.
Pour over a marriage on the rocks.
Shake vigorously.

I’ll let you know how it turns out in a few years.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner and MomsRising.org are supporting an update of the Toxic Substances Control Act, to address endocrine disrupters that mess with girls’ hormones in an effort to fight early childhood puberty.

According to the Journal of Pediatrics more than one in ten girls are starting to develop breasts by age seven, with even higher rates in some communities, Finkbeiner writes in her post “Puberty in Second Grade?”.

Also from her post:

One of the many contributing factors to the rise in early puberty is that young children are exposed to dozens of potentially toxic chemicals on a daily basis.  In fact, endocrine disruptors, which are chemicals that mimic and interfere with hormones, show up in a wide variety of everyday items including: household cleaners, air fresheners, cosmetics, canned foods, and school supplies. These endocrine disruptors can cause the early onset of puberty. [2]
Updating the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is crucial to the health of our kids because, currently TSCA lacks a requirement that chemicals be tested to assess their ability to disrupt hormones.  This means that many of the chemicals we encounter every day have never been tested for safety.  In fact, since the passage of TSCA in 1976, the EPA has required testing of less than 1 percent of the chemicals in commerce!
The TSCA update would require chemical manufacturers to provide basic health and safety information for all chemicals as a condition for staying in or entering the marketplace. It would also, for the first time, make that information public. [3]

Take Action Now by sending a letter to your Congress person by clicking this link. It’s easy, takes a couple of seconds and will greatly impact the lives of girls.