Puberty Workshop for 4th Grade Girls???

Remember way, way, way back in the days when the entire school would annually get rounded up into the auditorium for "the video"? We all laughed when the huge projector would come down and we'd get to learn all about our bodies and sex, the terror of VD, and the curse. You know the one where the sperm danced, I tried to find it on Youtube and can't (I'd love to see it now). Well, fast forward 30+ years and you have "Puberty Workshops". Students are invited with their parents, boys workshop was at 6:30 and girls at 7:30.

We walk in and it's all 9 and 10 year old girls with their mothers and one brave father. The instructor is this little mousy woman about 40 years old, and I do mean mousy, she must have been picked because little girls can relate to her voice. She starts out by letting the girls know that while she may be in charge of the workshop they each had with them "experts". This I loved. She constantly referred to the parents as "experts" when she got to questions that were a bit out of her realm (will get to those later). Then she begins with the basic questions to test her audience: Who knows what puberty is? What is menstruation? What is a cycle? Kids are raising their hands and there are the occasional giggles. Until she whips out "Puberty Girl".

"Puberty Girl" is a poster sized post-it of an outline of a girl. The fun starts when she asks the girls to make "PB" go through puberty right before their eyes. The question: what things happen to a girl to let her know she's going through puberty? For each correct answer, she had that young lady come up and draw the answer. First answer was hair. Maddy sank down in her chair like the woman was talking specifically about her. Girls went up and drew hair on legs, arms, armpits, stomachs, and one very brave girl drew one long swiggle of pubic hair. The moms were hysterical when one girl muttered, "I wish I only had one long one!"

The girls went down the line adding hips, breast (and the need for training bras), pimples, sweat, body odor, and finally the dreaded period. Yes, a little girl went up and drew three tiny droplets of red blood. Maddy turns to me with her eyes big as saucers, "How old were you, Mom?" I told that I was 9 when I got mine, she nearly fainted, "But, I'm 10! That means any day now!!" Ugh, so not ready! I mean me!

We had a pretty good 20 minutes of straight menstrual cycle talk with drawings to back up the explanations. WC (Workshop chic) was a decent artist, I'll leave it at that! After she explained all that it was open question and answer time (she gave the girls index cards for anonymous questions for the end). Would you believe a little, yes little, girl raised her hand to ask, "Is it true that you get Bulimic when you have your period?" Her mother turned 10 shades of pink when all the other mothers turned around to find the source of the question. WC quickly had to explain what that was and that the little girl should have some talk time with her expert.

All the mommies got great joy whenever she referred to childbearing waaaayyyyyyyyyy into their futures with each mommy adding, "Yeah, when you're thirty". And remember what a good artist she was? When the question, "How do the babies come out?", she pointed directly at the tiny hole, and I'd say about 90% of the girls cried out, "But that's so small it has to hurt!" Mommies just smiled and smiled while we each nodded, "Yep!"

Now my final piece of this workshop story still has my jaw on the floor. Pictures are worth a thousand words, well then this WC successfully burned an image into each of these little girls minds when the anonymous question came up, "What is the clitoris for?" First, she blushed! Thought she was experienced and heard everything, right? Well, picture not just what she says but how she says it: "God made us women very lucky (pause) because the clitoris is well, just for (pause, eyes closed, sigh, mini-shudder) pleasure." I thought I was imagining things until I looked at the mom behind me who had her nose flared up and her eyes bulging out of her head. Seriously?!?! I don't think any of the girls caught it, let alone understood it, but, I still have no real words for this WC. Am I being irrational? Is it too much to expect a little, what's the word I'm looking for?....SELF-CONTROL!!!

Luckily their 4th graders and their attention span after an hour started to drift and she gave them handouts to do with their experts and we hightailed it out of there. I...somebody fill in the blanks for me because I'm speechless about her final Q&A...

The Dreaded Sex Talk!

OK, so I get this note from Maddy hidden under the computer keyboard that reads:

"We need to talk about something that you probably

don't want to talk about until I'm a teenager."

I show the note to hubby and then it disappears, only to reappear hours later and read this:

"I'd really like to know where babies come from."

This time when I tell hubby, his response is, "So what are you going to tell her?" After laughing for a few minutes, I say, "WE are going to figure out exactly what WE are going to say to her, and how WE are going to say it!" Needless to say that I did some research, spoke to a few moms with grown kids, talked to a handful of women that remembered their sex talk, and many of them referred to books. Being that Maddy is an avid reader, as are hubby and I, this would make good quality family time and do what we all like to do together - READ! My #1 fan and boss suggested the book, "Where Did I Come From?" by Peter Mayle. And one of my co-workers recommended, What's Happening to My Body: Book for Girls by Lynda Madaras. I picked up a copy of both books from Borders on the way home from work on Friday. Hubby and I read the Peter Mayle book first since it was specific to what she wanted. All I can say is "WOW!!" There are illustrations, and he refers to "romantic sperm". I couldn't believe it, still can't, that this is the stage that we are at with her already...although everyone insists that this is the appropriate age to have this conversation. Hubby took the Lynda Madaras book with him to work to scout it out for us, and came to the same conclusion that I did: We can wait on that book! Why? Because while this one is broken down for just girls it explains everything from puberty to pubes, to menstruation to masturbation! Sooooooooooooooo not ready for that! Although, we do realize that we will have to address it before next fall when she enters middle school...hate that 5th graders will be in school with 8th graders!!

Anyhoo, fast forward to a few hours ago when we called her downstairs to answer her questions. First we asked her what made her want to know now. (We thought it may have been her friends) but alas it was one of those dang Y7 TV shows, iCarly or something, where at the end of one of the episodes, someone says, "Oh, yeah where do babies come from?", and they all made a face and repeated the question. (her words). This is why our children mature too fast, even with a show that has a rating of Y7 (meaning it's ok for children over the age of 7 to watch), there are undertones of sex, making out, relationships...UGH! Back to family time, we tell her we are going to read a book together and she can stop at any time to ask questions. We each took turns reading the passages from the book, and commenting on the pictures as we went along. Many of the terms she already knew like: penis, vagina, umbilical cord, breasts, hips...she stopped only a few times to clarify small things. We found it interesting that she completely glossed over the "making love" portion and mainly focused her questions on the baby being inside mommy's stomach and how it got out if it wasn't cut out aspect. We thought she would have had questions for days on the romantic sperm and the explanation of how daddy likes to "love" mommy, but she didn't. Afterwards we asked her what she learned and she repeated most of it. She then ran upstairs to get a life size 12week old baby that some fanatic slipped to her when we went to a street fair 2 weeks ago. Didn't even know she had it, but she was fascinated now with her extra knowledge on how tiny Linky was at 12 weeks. All in all, we were relieved that it went so smoothly. We asked her was she OK, and she assured us that she was, and that we had answered her questions. We told her we were holding on to the book, because knowing her it would end up in school and we'd get a call from an irate parent!!