Strollerderby

I think it's a conversation that has to start really young and continue until they're adults.  With our 2 year old, we've already started talking about her "private body" and how there are parts of her that no one should touch unless they're cleaning her (changing diaper, bathing).  As she gets older we'll answer her questions as they come up.  I think it's really important that a girl know what a period is before she gets one, because I know several women who got their first, had no idea what it was, and thought they were dying.

But if you have the conversation in small pieces over their whole childhood, you take the pressure off of having The Big Talk and can be more at ease and natural.  I think leaving The Talk up to the schools is dangerous.  I don't want to outsource one of the most important discussions I'll ever have with my daughters.  Depending on the curriculum, I may opt them out of sex ed all together...  especially if it's "abstinence only" "education" because it's proven NOT to work.

A red party, though?  That's just disgusting.  My mom got me flowers and took me out for a special dinner when I got my first period.  That's plenty, thank you.  I plan to take my girls for a mani and pedi, and then out for a special meal, when they get theirs.

My dad's Big Talk with my brother, in its entirety:

"Birds do it.  Bees do it.  You don't do it."

Hahaha,

Amy @ prettybabies.blogspot.com

I've never attempted to hide any of the realities of life from my daughter.  She has a 4-year-old understanding of how babies are made (the daddy plants a seed inside the mommy's uterus and it grows into a baby) and she's followed me into the bathroom since the day she could walk, so she knows when I have my period and that she'll get hers when she's older.  Heck, she'll offer me a tampon from under the vanity from time to time ("Mommy, you need one of these?").  I think it's better to have a running dialogue in which they get little nuggets of information on an age-appropriate basis than having to have "the talk".  After I got that speech from my mom upon my 10th birthday, I just remember thinking: "Excuse me???  Blood is going to come out of where???"  I even remember my mom telling me that I should never bring up my period in front of my dad because that would make him "uncomfortable."  I think hiding these things from our kids until they're "old enough" to know just reinforces the old ideas that our bodies and their functions are dirty and we don't discuss them unless absolutely necessary.  My daughter will grow up always just having known these things, that they're normal, healthy functions of our bodies and it's no big secret.