# My daughter, 153 months old, just had her first period **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 9, 2012, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297 "2012-03-09T17:49:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Beastly\_Rotter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/41 "2012-03-11T02:35:11Z")
> [@azraiel](#): > > Menarche isn’t exactly private, I think is the point. Both of my girls started when mom was out of town, so I was thrust into a very involved role. It’s terrifying enough for a girl to have blood coming out of an otherwise healthy body (even if she’s mentally prepared for it). It’s something else entirely to have to ask for help from a male, and in my case not a biodad but the dude her mom picked up with. I drove her to buy pads SO IT’S MY STORY TOO. ---
**Author:** ![Gleena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b3f665/32.png) [@Gleena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gleena)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/42 "2012-03-11T04:14:35Z")
Yeah, I’m right in the middle of this now. My little guy is 16, six feet tall and 200lbs, plays rugby, is studying for his big exams next year and is taking a certification in fitness training. Pretty sure I was tying his gloves to his sleeves and sending him off to kindergarten last week or so. ---
**Author:** ![Ahoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/50afbb/32.png) [@Ahoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ahoy)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/43 "2012-03-11T04:50:42Z")
> [@RetroVertigo](#): > > I guess I don’t see the big deal in discussing the details of one’s child, on a anonymous message board. This is a very disturbing trend. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/44 "2012-03-11T05:10:59Z")
> [@Brown\_Eyed\_Girl](#): > > I’m pretty sure that was Topol and cast. Okay, I confess. I didn’t view that YouTube link. I can’t view videos on this machine. But I knew it was _somebody_ doing Sunrise Sunset. ---
**Author:** ![splatterpunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3be4f8/32.png) [@splatterpunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/splatterpunk)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/45 "2012-03-11T05:31:10Z")
> [@azraiel](#): > > But menarche wasn’t just their experience. It was primarily theirs, but it was mine as well. No, it was entirely theirs. ---
**Author:** ![Beastly\_Rotter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/46 "2012-03-11T05:58:34Z")
> [@splatterpunk](#): > > No, it was entirely theirs. But there was BBQ afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/47 "2012-03-11T06:30:14Z")
Maybe they shared it with you, but do they really want to share it with a message board of strangers? I would have DIED if one of my parents did this to me. My grandmother did that to my mother (when giving news about the family, she’d say, “Oh, and Guin’s Mom got her period.” or something like that. My mother said she wanted to kill her) Just tell me – have you ASKED your daughters how they would feel about this? Because I’m seeing that it’s mostly grown MEN telling these stories. Just because they ask you to buy pads doesn’t mean they want you discussing it with everyone. I hate to pull the whole “oh, you’re men, you’ll never understand”, but, well, yeah, it’s exactly that. You can talk about your kids and still respect their privacy. Kids are people too, you know. They’re not miniature adults, but they’re not just extensions of your ego. ---
**Author:** ![Ahoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/50afbb/32.png) [@Ahoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ahoy)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/48 "2012-03-11T06:49:26Z")
If my parents went around talking about my first boner on a message board, I would not have appreciated it, then or now. I don’t care if you guys are strangers. That is even weirder. I was reading a thread right here last week where people were all disturbed about people with cell phones on a bus broadcasting all their personal crap. Even funnier was people were then _sharing_ the TMI stuff they heard! That’s what you’re doing right here right now. Not everything is worth sharing, and not everything is yours to share, even if you took a tiny, tiny, tiny part in it. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/49 "2012-03-11T07:06:32Z")
Why is anyone’s provacy being violated when neither the OP or the child’s names are used? Unless kid knows the OP’s username and can snoop for it here, the privacy concern is irrelevant. How many of us ask the people in our lives befire we post something anonymously about them here? I wish people would stop thinking about the children! ---
**Author:** ![saje](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saje/32/3631_2.png) [@saje](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saje)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/50 "2012-03-11T12:18:15Z")
I remember my mom telling my aunt (her sister) when I started, in my presence, and I was MORTIFIED. If she had been speaking to a complete stranger in a town across the country from where we lived, and I wasn’t present but learned of it later, I’d have still been mortified and furious. It may be a “rite of passage” that every girl endures, but that doesn’t mean that I’m comfortable with passing that information along to strangers. Hell, I’m 50 and I still don’t feel comfortable discussing it. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/51 "2012-03-11T13:24:33Z")
Even if this remains completely anonymous I can’t understand the need for the story to be posted at all. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/52 "2012-03-11T13:30:43Z")
> [@Cicero](#): > > Even if this remains completely anonymous I can’t understand the need for the story to be posted at all. You can say the same for about 80% of the threads on the board. ---
**Author:** ![saje](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saje/32/3631_2.png) [@saje](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saje)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/53 "2012-03-11T14:47:51Z")
I do say that for about 90% of the TMI threads. This qualifies as TMI, for sure. ---
**Author:** ![aerodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f08c70/32.png) [@aerodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aerodave)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/54 "2012-03-11T17:12:18Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Why is anyone’s provacy being violated when neither the OP or the child’s names are used? Unless kid knows the OP’s username and can snoop for it here, the privacy concern is irrelevant. > > How many of us ask the people in our lives befire we post something anonymously about them here? > > I wish people would stop thinking about the children! This is absolutely right. Not only do several layers of anonymity and separation make the whole thing pointless to be outraged about…but the double standard is disgusting. If it’s wrong to share a semi-private, possibly embarrassing experience of a child, then it’s just as wrong to share a story about how your husband tried to cook dinner and fucked up the lasagna. You may argue that those are totally different things, but what they have in common is the entirety of this discussion. Some posters are saying the standard should be “Would he/she appreciate you sharing that story with a bunch of strangers?” Well, if hubby is sensitive about it, and his answer the that question would be “no”, then you don’t get to tell the hubby-fucked-up-dinner story in MPSIMS. But I wager that most of the people bitching about the OP’s story wouldn’t hesitate to tell something embarrassing about their anonymous spouse. Hypocrites. ---
**Author:** ![lavenderviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cdc98d/32.png) [@lavenderviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lavenderviolet)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/55 "2012-03-11T17:35:10Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Just because they ask you to buy pads doesn’t mean they want you discussing it with everyone. Yeah, I remember how intensely private I was when I was that age. Times like these, I thank God that when I was going through menarche I was able to find pads around the house and didn’t have to announce it to ANYONE. I didn’t want or need to talk about it with anyone at all, not even Mom. It’s sad that many girls are forced to make it into a big “family thing” because they need help getting supplies or such, when they may not want that at all. As long as the OP does intend to keep his on-board persona totally separate from his real life persona then this seems harmless. But there have been others who have posted this kind of detail about their kids and then show up at Dopefests with the family and stuff, so I would say that in most cases the less said about these kinds of details the better. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/56 "2012-03-11T18:09:21Z")
> [@lavenderviolet](#): > > Yeah, I remember how intensely private I was when I was that age. Times like these, I thank God that when I was going through menarche I was able to find pads around the house and didn’t have to announce it to ANYONE. I didn’t want or need to talk about it with anyone at all, not even Mom. It’s sad that many girls are forced to make it into a big “family thing” because they need help getting supplies or such, when they may not want that at all. > . Word. I didn’t tell my mother, much less “deeply involve” my father. And I was 9. And no, it was not a “terrifying experience” as I knew exactly what was happening and what to do about it. I didn’t tell my mother, not because I was “hiding” it or whatever – it did not occur to me that it was something she would expect to be told. I mean, if you want to trot out alarming aspects of getting your period that no one really tells you about, I’d throw fist-sized clots out there to the universe, but “getting your period” as an experience should not be a scary unless the girl has been left in shameful ignorance. Nor is it a family event unless the girl chooses for it to be one. That the status of bleeding from one’s vagina is a legitimate thing to consider very private… I really don’t believe it can be disputed. Finally, getting one’s period doesn’t say the slightest thing about the girl’s maturity or mental development, since it can happen at any time from 8 to 18 and still be basically within the boundaries of “normal.” It’s not a milestone of anything but biological development, and I don’t know why fathers concern themselves with it, to a greater degree than they concern themselves with the amount of pubic hair on their son’s dicks. ---
**Author:** ![Ahoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/50afbb/32.png) [@Ahoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ahoy)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/57 "2012-03-11T18:54:02Z")
> [@aerodave](#): > > Hypocrites. Oh please. Projecting just to make yourself feel better. Just because my wife doesn’t post doesn’t mean she doesn’t read here, or that she won’t, ever. My own teenage daughter is the one who told me about this place. What you post here can be found by anyone, anytime. It may be anonymous, except to the person who finds it online and says hey, that’s _me_ they’re talking about! But whatever makes you sleep better. Real classy bunch you have here. ---
**Author:** ![Critical\_Mass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@Critical\_Mass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical_Mass)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/58 "2012-03-11T19:30:13Z")
It’s interesting that talking openly about one’s co-workers doesn’t bring out similar comments. Or is talking about co-workers different? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/59 "2012-03-11T19:43:11Z")
> [@Ahoy](#): > > But whatever makes you sleep better. Real classy bunch you have here. Then leave. You won’t be missed. By anybody. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2012, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297/60 "2012-03-11T20:07:11Z")
I’m afraid I have to agree, about not really seeing the need for the reference to her period. It’s a lovely sentiment expressed, about your child becoming an adult, truly. But it could have benefited from a little editing, in my opinion. How she feels about discussing it with her Nan and Bro is no indicator she’d approve of all of us knowing. More to the point, how she feels about it right now, may well, not be how she feels about it in future. And it’s going to be there forever and for everyone to see. Thanks Mom! Isn’t it odd that parents, who are so guarded, about their teens posting personal details on line, do so without regard to their own words?:smack: I hope she grows up to share the details of your menopause and your hubby’s ED with us all!😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-daughter-153-months-old-just-had-her-first-period/615297.md?page=4)