10 things parents can do to prepare their daughters for puberty
We need to start talking about it much sooner
Original story by Stephanie Auteri for The Washington Post.
A study published earlier this year shows that girls feel unprepared for puberty. As a result, this time in their lives is marked by negative experiences. Sex educator Al Vernacchio traces this to our culture’s general discomfort with — and disrespect of — women’s sexuality.
“Young women are not encouraged to talk about their bodies or know their bodies or experiment with their bodies,” he says. “Everybody expects that, by the time a boy enters puberty, he knows what looks like, what it feels like, what’s normal for it. But it can be pretty common for a girl to go into puberty never having seen her own vulva.”
So parents need to start much sooner.
“Parents keep waiting until they see those signs of puberty,” says Eva Goldfarb, a sexuality educator. “But if you have zero conversations until ‘The Talk,’ the talk is not going to go anywhere.”
Here are 10 ways parental figures can help prepare their daughters for puberty.
“If Mom didn’t have the best experience in puberty,” Vernacchio says, “she may need to do some advance work. I think it’s okay for moms to say they’re nervous about this conversation. And I think it’s okay for moms to share experiences from their own life that maybe aren’t positive, but come from the perspective of ‘that’s not what I want for you.’”
“The way you act gives your children a sense of what you think and believe about sexuality,” says Debra Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth, one of the groups behind the sex-ed video series AMAZE.
“How you interact with you partner or spouse … what you say when you find your 3-year-old touching herself for pleasure (‘don’t do that’ or ‘don’t do that in public’?)… Each sends a message.”
“We can prepare kids for change at any age,” sex educator Cory Silverberg says. “Always be looking for opportunities to talk about how bodies change. Start planting those seeds.”
One example Silverberg gives is pointing out how your child’s grandparents are changing, and then tying that to how everyone’s body changes over time.
Many of the educators quoted in this piece mention the AMAZE videos, and similar online resources. Others use books, television plots and even the news as starting points for a conversation about puberty, relationships and sexuality.
“Set up a dynamic between you and your kid so that it isn’t about you delivering expert information from on high,” Silverberg says. “It should be understood that they’re going to ask questions, and you’re going to ask questions back.”
“Talk about what puberty looks like for all kids,” Silverberg says. “Avoid making assumptions about who your kid is going to be.”
Thea Eigo, a 15-year-old high school sophomore on the youth board for Advocates for Youth, says that one of the best things her mom did was to frame the changes that occur during puberty as normal.
“I have an older sister, and she and my mom were always super open about things,” she says. “When I started going through puberty, it wasn’t weird at all. I had grown up hearing about periods and shaving. I felt comfortable talking about it. I didn’t feel lost.”
Vernacchio uses the superhero framework so his students feel powerful, not powerless.
“But even if the superhero part of it doesn’t connect with either you or your daughter, you can still talk about the idea of puberty as powerful,” he says.
He recommends that mothers talk with their daughters about the women they admire.
“We don’t tell enough young women that if you move through the world as a woman, you’ll be treated differently,” Silverberg says. “If we don’t tell girls that enough and then they start experiencing it, they’ll think it’s just them, or that they’ve done something wrong.”
“The most important message you can give to your child is that you are an askable parent and that you’re there for them. That you love them unconditionally,” Hauser says.
For those who worry about giving their daughters too much information, and too soon, Goldfarb gives a final word of warning.
“There’s a whole world out there waiting to teach your child things that don’t match your values,” she says. “You don’t get to abdicate that responsibility, because someone else will take it over.”
