It was time! The questions were coming, and I was totally unprepared. I had not even one book that explained the “facts of life.” Does every parent think that this time comes far sooner than expected? I sure did!
I did my best to research online and made some book selections from Amazon. A couple of weeks later, I was armed with some top notch books to answer my daughter’s questions about human reproduction. I reviewed two of the best choices at The Curriculum Choice: It’s So Amazing! and What’s the Big Deal? Read them and be more prepared than I was.
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My son will be 10 next month and although not asking questions yet his younger sister may be soon. Perhaps girls, realizing they will be mothers themselves one day, get more interested than boys or perhaps we just haven’t gotten into in-depth discussions on biology and anatomy to allow them to make the leaps necessary.
Thanks for the reviews! This is a subject I’m not prepared for either, although I have been eyeballing the section at the library.
My daughter started asking when she was six! I think it has something to do with the fact that she is adopted, so she knew that another woman gave birth to her…set her on an early path to figure out how that happened. I posted about how I dealt with it here: http://www.franticallysimple.com/2008/09/23/more-like-a-deformed-reindeer/
Since then, I have also bought the American Girls book: Care and Keeping of Me. We have read it together and she has read more of it on her own. Not only does it discuss body changes, it talks about general hygiene, ie: skin and hair care, etc. That keeps it from being too heavy or all about puberty.
It does not talk about sex or sexual feelings at all. I don’t even think it talked much about why we menstruate. Instead it focused on how to handle those changes. My daughter loved it. It made her feel so good about herself; she called it life-changing.
The only thing I didn’t particularly like was the page that showed a drawing of a girl inserting a tampon, but my girl is only nine now. I took a lesson from your Frieda art study and paper-clipped those pages together. I explained what it was and that I didn’t think she was ready to get all of that information, but that she was welcome to look if she felt otherwise. She kept it clipped.
I’d highly recommend it as a supplement to your own moral/biological talks.
Sorry if this had turned into a book report, but I thought it might be helpful to someone, but I don’t feel like I can post about it on my own blog and not violate my daughter’s privacy. She would be mortified if all the relatives knew!
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I love your blog. It is neat learning about China.
We have “It’s not the stork” which is geared towards younger kids. I like it, but I have to say I think the series might be liberal for more conservative parents? Our library also has a really old book called something like, “Who Made Me?” or “God Made Me?” I can’t remember what’s the title.
I feel really sorry for you having to pay 5 extra dollars for each book! Ouch!
@ Heidi, No, I appreciate your input! We do have that book, and I agree that it’s quite well done. I started with that title, and then months later when it the ?s kept coming, moved on to the two books I mentioned in the reviews.
thanks! i’ll check those out. i have some but really don’t like it… it says it’s for a certain age group but i think it is dull, boring and too wordy. not that i’m trying to make it all sound exciting at this age, but you know what i mean!
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Thanks for posting about these. Just a few days ago a couple moms and I were talking about this very subject. We’ve talked with our 10-11yo girls about puberty but not this. I have the book in my amazon cart and will let me know of it also.
Looks like very helpful information, I just wish I’d had them 3 years ago when my dd started the questions!!
I made the HUGE mistake of giving a little too much info, to the point where she said she was sorry she had asked!!
Now, at 9 1/2, she has asked a few more questions, and we’ve had the “in-depth” discussion, and I don’t think she wants to know ANYTHING else!!! lol.
Poor baby, she’s very sensitive, I don’t know how we’ll actually make it through the things coming up in the next few years!!
Those look like marvelous books though, and I still may check into having at least one of them, just in case.
(probably would be better than me running off at the mouth with TOO much information!!)