The Talk

This blog is all about the birds and the bees and I don't mean a discussion about flying creatures that start with the letter b. I am talking about the discussion of what happens during puberty and the like.

...just warnin' ya.

My daughter is 9. My ex husband has been pressuring me to have "the talk" with her. He read on-line that sometimes girls start to menstruate around 9 or 10. Well that just seemed WAY to early to me...

...not to mention the trauma that I felt about having to sit down with my girl and go over all that stuff...

...oh to be in labor again, oh to go through those terrible twos, oh to feed her every two hours...now THOSE were the good old days of parenting compared.

Anyhoo...I just didn't want to do it so I have been avoiding the subject with him, but he would not relent. So I decided to ask some of the teachers who have girls my daughter's age what their thoughts are. My good friend Gaby, who has a daughter in Bella's grade, told me that this summer her doctor told her that she should have "the talk" very soon, because you don't want something to take her totally by surprise. Gaby and I decided that we should just do it...this was only after the science teacher who teaches this stuff to the 5th graders wouldn't do for us.

So I decided one night after her bath to sit down and go over what is going to happen to her body during puberty. She sat their with her eyes wide open and in total shock. I won't go into details but I think you'll get the idea on just how south the whole conversation went by two of the sentences she uttered between her sobbing.

1. "Well then I am just going to make sure that all my eggs are fertilized" (I had already decided that the sex talk needed to wait...but informed her that her "solution" wouldn't work unless she wanted to field her own soccer team by the time she was 15)

2. "You mean I have to go through that EVERY month for the REST OF MY LIFE" (I also didn't want to go into the discussion of menopause just yet...as it just might make me start to sob)

Needless to say I went to bed thinking that I traumatized my poor little girl...cause I really couldn't think of anything positive to say about the whole "time of the month" stuff.

What am I going to say?

...Oh it really isn't all that bad...(lie)

...It only lasts a short time and then you have a whole 3 weeks before it starts again...(not going to help)

...At least it doesn't hurt...(lie)

Well thankfully she asked a few more questions...and we bought the book "The Care and Keeping of You" by Valerie Schaefer

She has paged through it a couple of times, but at least I know she is informed about puberty...now I just have to muster up the courage to talk about sex...geez no one told me that parenting would only get harder...


...oh wait my mom did...

More Later

- A Ro