Tween girl shenanigans are beginning...

Post date: 2021-06-18 08:31:00

Well, it's happening. The sneaky puberty-related tween girl things. Please help me handle them.

To begin, this isn't a terrible thing. My 10 year-old shaved her legs for the first time last night, although I told her she wasn't allowed to do that yet. Found the leg hair in the bathtub, haha. I'm the mom in this situation and I'm struggling a little with how I should react to this - it could really set the scene for other stuff that's sure to come soon - everything from lying about where she's going after school (big yikes) to sneakily stuffing her bra or wearing lipstick or mascara to school (not such a big yikes).

Dad doesn't care about the leg shaving. Only wants to punish her for lying about it (he noticed her with his shaving cream and she said she only wanted to play with it in the bath).

Me, I'm a mom who doesn't know how to handle this stuff. I've been debating the leg shaving thing in my head and while as a feminist I think leg shaving is a dumb thing we do mainly for the male gaze, or to signal our conformance, and we shouldn't be ashamed of our body hair anyhow, yadda yadda. On the other hand, it's not good to tell young women/girls what they can or can't do with their bodies and appearances.

A lot of this is tied up with discomfort over her going through puberty, and while the world has moved on with how we handle these things, I suppose I haven't yet? I was born in the '80s. It's like, in theory, yes, girls should be allowed to have bare shoulders at school, but my child? Nope. I really need to get over this.

Suggestions? Books? Podcasts? I have a good relationship with this girl - we can joke and talk about almost any topic, including sex recently. But I still haven't had a discussion with her about how she's not supposed to have sex until...I don't even know what the answer to that is supposed to be. She's pretty good at pushing boundaries and probably took a calculated risk that if/when I found out she shaved her legs, I wasn't going to react too strongly. I'm a terrible noticer of appearances and I'm always distracted about something or other, and I haven't been able to 'fix' this about myself. Plus I have a three year old as well. So she can get away with a lot if she wants. And I'm pretty sure - she does want. She looks older than she is, she's hilarious, I think she'll always be popular and...I'm really nervous about all this as a former bookworm who was really awkward and unpopular before high school.

Please click Here to read the full story.