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Parenting with Connie: Puberty –– a girl's version
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Posted by conniem Wed Apr 4, 2007 15:07:58 PDT
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Puberty could possibly be the most tumultuous time of a girl’s life. There are so many changes, both emotional and physical, not to mention all the social drama in junior high and high school.

Sit down with your daughter and talk about what to expect in those years and prepare them for some of the changes.   

 

Hormones: A prepubescent girl will cycle hormonally a year before she starts her period. I always tell girls hormone cycles are not excuses to pound your little brother’s face into the pavement, but hormones are things we have to deal with.  It is a fact of life. Remember we have four hormones crashing and burning during a 28-day cycle, and I can usually pinpoint one or two days of crankiness for myself. (My kids would argue the number of days would be more like 25!) I suggest girls track their cycles so they know when those days are approaching and can be prepared.   

 

Body image: When I ask junior high boys why a girls' hips physiologically grow wide, I usually get the “she ate too many cheeseburgers” answer. But nothing prepared me for the boy who said her hips grow wide so she could push the cart at Wal-Mart! That, my friends, is a junior high boy brain. Her hip bones/pelvis widens for child-rearing years.

 

I talk with girls about body image. Estrogen puts fat deposits in all the right places. Her body is supposed to be soft and curvy. Sometimes she looks down at her chest and says, “Grow little friends, grow.” Sometimes she says, “Please stop growing.” Girls are physically maturing earlier and starting their menstrual cycles in elementary school. 

 

Accept her physical uniqueness, overlook her obvious oddities and please treat her like a lady. Tell your daughter she is lovely, beautifully made and wonderfully woven to grow up and be a strong, vibrant woman.

 

Emotions: Many of you have had days when you looked at your child sideways and they cried. You asked them why they were crying and they said, "I don’t know.” Emotions are exaggerated during puberty. Junior high girls are still trying to deal with all the changes, and sometimes any little thing can set them off. 

 

One of the things about girls this age, they start to pull away from their mom emotionally. I always tell girls to fight this.  They are going to need their parent so much in the next five to six years. So many things are happening socially and physically that are out of their control.

 

Does this sound familiar?  Take care of me, buy me everything, but don’t tell me what to do and let me do what I want. Well, that is a typical teenager. What do I tell my students?

First of all, I ask them, “What are parents ultimately trying to do?”

"Protect you," they reply!

So why do you fight them when they are trying to protect you?

Secondly, if a girl gets in trouble, who picks up the pieces of her life? Then I tell girls that parents have the right to speak to you about these things because they are the ones who are going to help you in the next five to six years get through these tough times.

 

One of the things I always mention is jealousy. Girls think that there is such a thing as perfection. They look at other girls and think, "If I only had straight hair," etc. I tell girls that if you are a jealous person, there will always be someone you will be jealous of. We discuss the qualities of a jealous person: they are critical, negative and they always draw attention to themselves. If girls really learn to like themselves, then other people will want to be around them.  No one wants to be around a critical, negative person –– they usually pick on other people and talk about people behind their backs. 

 

Social scene: Peer pressure is a real entity. Girls tell me that there is pressure to dress a certain way, perhaps name brand labels. There is pressure to pair off and have a boyfriend, to do sexual things with their boyfriends, and they have to deal with boyfriends who threaten to break up with them when they don’t. There is social pressure to join cliques, create cliques or pressure to be so different from anybody else that you are your own clique.  

 

Be prepared for many friend changes. The way the high school boundaries are changing, and the fickle nature of some friendships, they will change friends a few times before high school ends. Please explain to them that this is a natural separation or a difference of opinions/morals and that if they have one really good friend that they are probably better off than having multiple friends. It gets so complicated. 

How to cope:

Listen to her and respect her opinions/feelings. They may sound silly and trivial to you, but trust me, they are very real to her. If your child doesn’t speak to you, try to draw them out. Get them out of the house and away from the TV; it takes a lot for some teenagers to open up. Your daughter may not trust you because you tell all your relatives that she got her first bra. She is sometimes embarrassed by all these changes. Reassure her that she can trust you. 

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