Long time lurker, first time poster here, greetings.
The LittleChief is 12 and is showing absolutely zero signs of puberty – no underarm hair, voice not cracking, likely no pubic hair although I’m not going to look or ask. Still, he’s excited about shaving some day and I’ve been teaching him (with the plastic cover on the razor so he doesn’t cut himself, of course). Anyway, is there a specific sequence of development of secondary sex characterisitcs that we should look for? Like, will he get underarm hair, then his voice start cracking, then pubic hair, etc.? Or does it all sort of just happen at once in boys?
When The LittleChieftess starts getting that age in a few years, will she experience a certain sequence? As in, breast buds first, then underarm and pubic hair, then menstruation? Or is it random? Or does it all sort of happen at once?
I really don’t remember much about my own puberty, except that it sucked, and Mrs. Chieftess states that she had almost-fully-grown breasts by the time she got her first period.
Professor James M. Tanner, a child development expert, was the first to identify the visible stages of puberty.
Today, these stages are known as the Tanner stages or, more appropriately, sexual maturity ratings (SMRs). They serve as a general guide to physical development, although each person has a different puberty timetable.
That’s interesting, and I presume it’s very general, that is, at least the stages may progress at different rates for different people, so that in some cases the events are stretched out, and in others they seem to all be jammed together.
I don’t remember the order of things with my own puberty. My parents never talked to me about sex or puberty or anything like that, so I was only vaguely aware of things that might happen. Once I had my first ejaculation, it seemed like everything happened at once, although it probably didn’t.
Likewise, I felt the same way after I got my first period. My own personal first sign of puberty, that I noticed, was a very thick black hair where I hadn’t had one before. It just sort of popped out of nowhere!
As for the order in which secondary sexual characteristics appear, it depends on the whole hormone balance at the time. This is one reason why boys often have short-lived gynecomastia.
One thing I have heard many, many times is that the parents of 9-year-old girls suddenly feel like their sweet, gentle daughters have been hijacked by aliens, personality-wise. This is probably from an early hormonal surge.
Not in general. Obesity can trigger slightly early puberty and a very poor energy balance from not enough intake for energy out can delay it a bit, but mostly it is genetic.
And if so almost always one or both of the parents were. Mom got her period later than her friends or dad still growing to near the end of High School. 12 though is not very late yet. And for all the OP knows the kid is solidly Tanner 2 to early 3. The link on Tanner stages is very useful.
I remember one fellow commenting on this on a radio discsussion, said “I first knew I was becoming a man when my mother came back from grocery shopping and without a word, handed me a tube of underarm deoderant.”
And a lady I once dated says she ended up teaching the Grade 7 class because she had a limited sense of smell and so it fell to her by default.
I had this when I was about 14. My mother gleefully exclaimed that I was turning into a girl when we came back home. Not her finest moment…
As for the sequence in which the signs of puberty happened, I don’t really remember. I do remember noticing a few hairs on my pelvis one night, half a dozen on each side. They spread very quickly once I saw them.
The opposite is true in girls. That is, very low fat levels can significantly delay puberty in girls. This is most apparent in gymnasts and ballerinas, who often don’t go through puberty until several years later than most girls.
Puberty generally correlates with a growth spurt, and some kids put on extra weight before that happens. So if an otherwise skinny kid starts to look a little puffy (like all over weight gain, not just in one spot) that’s a pretty good sign something’s up.
To fill in some detail about pubertal growth spurts.
Girls have their growth spurt in early puberty; boys in the latter half.
Hence the old awkward eighth grade dances with girls towering above many of the boys, their heads closer to their chests than their eyes. Girls stop growing usually within one and a half to two years of menarche. Pudginess is not a very good indication of puberty onset.
My son is 14. The first thing I noticed was the need for deodorant, about 11 or 12. Then within a few months his voice was deeper and he had armpit hair. Within a year he had grown 5 inches. Now he is slightly taller than me. All of this to say, once it happened for him, it was VERY quick.
I’ve read that a body weight of approximately 30kg (66 pounds) is, except for people who have dwarfism, a trigger for the hormone surges, because it’s a way to guarantee that girls in particular are big enough for their bodies to support a fetus. Improved nutrition is one reason why puberty is happening earlier.
I have a distant relative who had to go on puberty blockers when she started sprouting hair at age 6 in places where 6-year-olds shouldn’t have it. She was taken off them when she was 9, and progressed normally through her puberty and now has children of her own.
Anecdotally, I didn’t start needing to shave until I was almost 17, but I had already reached my adult height at 13 and became “sexually functional” at 14.
The vast majority of the time late puberty is genetic. That does not mean that one or the other parent, or even an aunt or uncle or grandparent has it you know, although usually a parent does. Genetics is like that. It can be autosomal dominant, recessive, X linked, even polygenic.
There are other causes of delay less commonly. Again, some delay with severely inadequate energy balance happens to some degree, a result of chronic disease, various syndromes …