Let’s not panic people! January 23, 2008
Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs , trackbackJay forwarded me this article on children and puberty.
I have to say, I think the author is panicking. Yes, girls are starting to develop breasts earlier. Yes, puberty is setting in earlier, Yes, media starts to plague our kids with sexualized images from an early age. But seriously, when she states "Today, girls are ditching their dolls by the time they’re barely out of kindergarten."? Hello? I have a kindergartener. She still plays with Barbie, and the play house. Last night the girls were playing "Horsie family" together.
Oooh and how about this one:
"Eight- and 9-year olds are learning to make change for a dollar. These
are children who are learning the most fundamental facts in school.
Imagine trying to teach that child the fundamentals of sex. They’re not
even playing Monopoly yet. They’re still playing Candyland," Diana
Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women and
Families tells the Times.
Okay, call me silly, but most 8 and 9 year olds (we are talking 2nd to 3rd graders) are done with Candyland by the end of first grade. They can READ now and are working on games that involve reading. And guess what? My kids are playing monopoly junior. They like it. It’s a counting game to them.
And could SOMEBODY please explain to me why there is a belief that kids can’t understand sex? Hello? The fundamentals? Easy: You need half of a baby from the mother, half from the father. The woman has a vagina that leads to her uterus. The man has a penis. The woman will make an egg that has half of the baby stuff once a month, the man puts his penis in the woman’s vagina and lets his sperm, they look like tiny tiny tadpoles, go. The sperm try to get to the egg. If they do, and they get together, the egg and sperm will make a home in the uterus to grow a baby.
At this age, kids will still go ICK over the thought of the mechanics. They aren’t emotionally ready to have sex. They can LEARN about it. They aren’t stupid. We’ve gotten about half way through the above conversation. So far, they haven’t asked how the sperm gets in to meet the egg, and I will give that info when they ask. No biggie.
Not only are they physically getting older younger, girls are inundated
by more sexualized images than ever before thanks to a celebrity
culture that glorifies skanky-ness. As if all of those hormones and new
curves weren’t confusing enough. Today’s girls barely have time to
comprehend or accept the fact they’re maturing before they are told
that in order to be popular, they have to dress like full-grown women
– and suggestively at that. Call it the Britney, Lindsey, Paris
effect. As a mother, I’m worried. And my daughter is still in diapers!
Okay- honey, time to chill. You claim to have grown up in 1980s. Well, so did I. Remember Madonna? You aren’t going to call THAT skanky? Don’t you remember the mini skirt with the lace leggings that EVERYONE had to have? How popular were you? If I recall my middle school and high school days, I wasn’t on the popular side. I wore what I was comfortable with. I didn’t want to dress silly because I was told to. I wasn’t that stupid and neither will your daughter be that stupid. We, as parents, have incredible influence over our children’s decisions. Keep lines of communication open. Don’t alienate your child. Teach what moral values you find are important.
The good news is that armed with this new information, we can do
something about it. We can do our best to instill self-esteem from the
moment our daughters are born by emphasizing their minds, their hearts
and being strong and healthy rather than focusing on physical beauty
(or what society deems beautiful). We can take control of what they
watch on television and their time on the Internet. We can applaud
achievements that celebrate who they are, not what they are wearing.
Good, good, there is much more we can do as parents, bu this is a good start. You don’t need to know that the world pushes silly ideas on our children to feel you have to do something about it.
Seriously, people need to chill over studies like this and not forget that parents are still number one when helping our children make decisions.
Oh and for those who continue to claim that the bGH is causing this issue of early puberty, Check the research. The banning of this hormone is mostly due to ANIMAL safety, not human safety. There are some concerns of IGF-1 in humans, but the webpages that summarize the research overstate the issues.
Comments»
I think that’s a bit alarmist. G is turning 9 on Saturday and still happily plays with Polly Pockets, stuffed animals and Littlest Pet shop toys. She wears jeans that cover her butt and shirts that cover her belly because that’s what I buy her — sure, there are preteen skank outfits for sale at the store, but that doesn’t mean I have to let her wear them. She knows about the mechanics of sex and has informed me that she never wants to do that and will be adopting her children instead. In short, she’s a totally normal 9-year-old, as are most of her friends.
Also, I think heredity still has a lot more to do with puberty than hormones in milk and meat. G has been vegetarian since birth and only gets organic hormone-free milk, and she’s starting to develop a bit — not because she’s full of weird chemicals, but because there are a lot of early developers in our family. She’s one of only two or three girls in her grade who are starting early, so there are still many more who don’t than who do.
Also, don’t hormones in meat get…um…digested? Like…um…broken down chemically into…um…*other things*?! Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, that kind of stuff? The stuff that recombines in your gut to product massive amounts of smelly gas?
Oh, well. Yup, just look cross-eyed at a ::shiver:: hormone, and it’s going to be absorbed and turn you into a preteen pubescent monster.
Sorry. My biologist fuddy-duddy bro has made me very aware of the way that stuff that goes *into* your mouth gets re-arranged inside your guts quite quickly.
I thought early puberty was being attributed to greater body fat. I read somewhere that puberty is triggered, to a certain extent, by the ability of the woman’s body to nurture a child and that was, in some part, determined by body fat. So the fact that kids in North America are, on average, much fatter at an early age, is supposedly what is responsible for early puberty. It does sort of make sense from a biological perspective.
Awesome writing! I loved this!
Funny and yet sad how so many people are worried about studies like these and yet do so little to prevent the bad influences of TV, commercialism, computer games, bad-languaged music and other icons of our culture from the contributions they make. If these are the kinds of things that kids are exposed to as role models, then why are we surprised at how they turn out. I grew up when the Beatles were in their drug-experimenting phase and didn’t get to listen to Sgt.Pepper and the later albumns until I was out of high school. My home had censorship. My girls get it from me as well. As high-tech as we are as parents, our kids view very little TV, are limited in their on-line and computer game time and are told “No” so often that they are not surprised by it. Still I think they are totally spoiled, but at least I am not worried about outside influences too much. Their parents are the biggest influences in their lives and I think this is the way it should be at their ages (12 & 10).