Girls talk life changes with parents
It was a brainstorming session on the dramatic changes of puberty, and the outspoken girls were beating the adults with a very long list.
Body changes. Self-consciousness. Liking boys. Zits. Parents embarrassing you more.
“You get to shave your legs,” said 11-year old Jenna Burgener, a sixth-grader at Lakes Middle School.
The answers came rapid-fire from the 9- to 12-year-olds perched on the edges of their chairs Saturday at the Harding Family Center in Coeur d’Alene. They came with their mothers, one dad and one grandmother to the “Tea and Puberty” parent-child workshop sponsored by Planned Parenthood of the Inland Northwest.
When the girls and their parents assembled to compare lists, the girls laughingly said theirs was best. But the generations also got new insights by interviewing each other.
One question: “What do you think is the greatest pressure facing young people your age today?”
“I thought the greatest pressure facing young people was grades. But Jenna said it was not having a boyfriend,” said Wendy Burgener-Wallin, Jenna’s mother.
The goal of the afternoon workshop was to help break down barriers between the generations and help parents learn how to be “askable” about major changes in their children’s lives, said Margaret Mount, education director for the Spokane-based Planned Parenthood chapter.
“Our goal is to create healthy futures for youth and adults,” Mount said.
Desi and Latisha, two Rogers High School 16-year-olds who asked that their last names not be published, helped with the puberty workshop. They are members of Planned Parenthood’s teen advisory board.
Last year, they helped lobby in Olympia for comprehensive sex education to give teenagers more information, including instruction on contraceptive use in case abstinence fails. Some legislators were sympathetic, while others opposed the proposal, they said.
“At Rogers, some of my friends have gotten pregnant and ruined their lives,” Desi said. “Planned Parenthood has taught us that you don’t have to have sex to have a relationship.”
Recently, U.S. teen pregnancy and birthrates have plummeted to record lows, and experts are debating the reasons.
Counselors who work with teens quoted in a Knight Ridder story on the trend earlier this month attributed the drop to several factors, including more teens vowing to refrain from intercourse, more effective use of birth control and more assertive girls with career aspirations who are unwilling to give in to male pressure for sex.
However, the U.S. teen birthrate remains high among industrialized nations – twice Canada’s and five times France’s, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.