So I'm not gonna be able to give you a full
complete answer just because there's a whole lot
of questions that I would wanna understand.
How, how, how puberty itself is influencing your daughter.
I would suggest that they go to the course
that we did on going
through puberty on the developmental stages.
Um, the on on parent guidance, it's, again, this is free
to parents, but we have a whole class on,
I think it's the stages 11 to 14 as
as helping your child adapt to that life,
change their identity going through, through puberty.
Um, again, I probably don't have enough time to give you all
of that content, but I, we do have content on parent
guidance that is specific to that age range,
so I would strongly recommend that.
But let me in the meantime, just give you a couple thoughts.
One of the things that we know is that any, any girl going
through puberty has so much body questions like,
what in the world is happening to me?
They begin to develop in ways
that their body is, they're not used to that.
So helping them communicate about this is
how your body's going to change is a
really important conversation.
Mom, daughter can be very helpful,
especially mom who's been through it.
Just helping them understand the normalcy, especially
as menstruation starts,
and their body is like, what is this?
And why is this happening?
Helping them understand, so they're educated much better
to come from you than it is for school.
And the reason why is it helps you have this open dialogue.
Uh, because many times we feel embarrassed.
The other part of it is their identity. Oh my goodness.
The identity. When you're going
through puberty, your body's changing.
If you're ahead of your peers or behind your peers.
There's a lot of emotional stuff.
Like, well, I'm more advanced and, and I'm embarrassed.
Girls who go through puberty earlier
often feel more embarrassed by their body than those
who are a little bit delayed.
If you're too delayed, that's a very different thing than
you get made fun of or you get
mocked in different ways at school.
And so there's challenges.
So helping your child adapt to their body changes
and the social influence that, that now coming in
so they can talk with you about it.
Keeping that open dialogue is really important.
Uh, then the other thing that I would really want
to emphasize with them is when they're going through this,
they're gonna be emotional mood swings inevitably, right?
And we, we know from research
that I'll give you, I'll give you an example.
This comes from the research of Dr. Roy Baumeister.
Now it's you.
This is research based,
so don't shoot the, don't shoot the messenger.
Okay? Um, we know that when a woman is menstruating,
she eats about 20% more than when she is not menstruating.
So for that period of time, leading up to menstruation,
more hungry, more, that, that's just the way the body works.
And so helping our children understand this is a part
of your journey and you're gonna experience this.
And, and you might even say, sweetheart,
I'm sorry that you have to go through this.
'cause it's not easy. You're giving them love.
You're giving them care. You're educating them on what's
gonna happen to their body and what's actually normal.
So you're helping them understand the physiological change.
You, you might be hungry during this period of time.
Well, here's why. Here's what's going on.
Your body's actually in pain.
And when it's in pain, it tries to
Cope in certain ways.
And so education and information can be really helpful.
So get educated on how to help your child during that time
so you can communicate authentically without fear
and with love.
