I was 9 when I started mine. If I might make a suggestion, try to turn it into something to celebrate. I did get teased but I didn’t feel bad about it, I just thought I was more ‘‘mature’’ than my classmates. Maybe you can help her get a bra and learn to shave and stuff. You know, girl stuff. And make cupcakes. As much as possible try to make it a happy thing, a sort of coming-of-age thing. Tell stories about your own experience of puberty. During that time you could even talk about how to handle teasing if it does happen, so she’s prepared but understands there is nothing wrong with her.
“Not everyone who’s big is an adult” I remember telling my daughter.
Yes. This is what I came into the thread to recommend. This book is amazing. I got it for my daughter when she was around 7 years old, and she devoured it. It’s dog-eared from having been read so many times. She now knows more about puberty, development, and the menstrual cycle than I think I do. Every time I try to tell her something about it, I get, “I KNOW, Mom. I read about it in my Body Book for Girls book.”
We eat a mostly-vegetarian diet, almond/rice/soy milk and she’s never been fat (except when she was a baby, but aren’t all babies?). Her 12 yo cousin looks flat like a board, her 9 yo cousin looks like a tomboy, I won’t ask if they are going through puberty, but it doesn’t seem so.
In any case, doctor appointment made. I told her it’s because it’s time for her yearly birth-month check up (it’s true), so she doesn’t feel like anything is wrong.
Nocturnal orgasms are not the same as nocturnal emissions. We get the fun part without the embarrassing messy part.
[sticks fingers in ear] LA LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU [/father of 7 year old girl]
Soy has been linked to early puberty. Not a big deal, but a lot of soy could be the reason its happening so fast.
Tell me about it. My oldest is turning 11 this fall and she started developing breasts at 8. She has had her period for about a year now. :eek: I am positive that at 12 she will appear to be 17 to 19 years old to most people as she could pretty easily pass as 14-15 year old now. I am worried about predators with her, meaning anyone who wants to have sex with her before she is ready. She is still firmly 10 in her mindset and emotional development. It is pretty difficult for her these days, and I can only imagine it will get harder though middle school.
My youngest is 8 now and is also starting to develop in this way though not as noticeably as my older daughter did at this age. That said, she is a picky eater an is not as large as my older daughter was at this age. This relates to what we learned from our pediatrician…
When my daughter showed what we thought was an extremely early onset of puberty (9-10 years old!) we talked to our pediatrician who told us (paraphrasing here) that it was really a function of nutrition. She claimed that a hormonal switch is turned on when women weigh 100 lbs (give or take) that triggers sexual development. My oldest has always been large for her age, not overweight in the slightest, but in the 99th percentile for height. At 5’4" tall and 110 lbs, she is at least 6-8 inches taller than anyone else in her 5th grade class that started this week. She has always been spectacularly healthy and is a natural athlete and an excellent eater (not picky at all and very healthy in her habits).
Hmmm. Can someone talk ME down from this ledge? Damn I worry about her when I really think about it. She is too eager to please and not nearly suspicious enough for my taste and with the way she looks has the potential to really get her in some troubling situations. 
BTW, in our household we eat a nearly vegetarian diet, mostly organic (>90%), very little dairy and almost no soy. Just FYI…
Well, that does it! Tomorrow I buy a cow!
We don’t eat a lot of soy, just occasionally. I eat a lot more soy than she does. I was always very careful about her diet, chicken was almost banned, due to possible hormone contamination, we ate as much organic food as possible, and at home we cook everything from scratch. I even grow some of my own veggies. I breastfed her for 2 years and never bought baby food, but did my own from fresh food.
I wonder if all this high-quality food is not to blame for early development.
BTW, at 8 my daughter is 61 lb. Nowhere near 100. But like yours, mine is healthy as an oxen, other than the occasional cold, she’s never been sick a day in her life.
Sorry, but 8 doesn’t strike me as THAT early.
My oldest sister started her period when she was nine (which means she entered puberty at around 8). My mother started hers at 16. My twin sister started hers at 12, and me at 11. We were all over the place. All of us were healthy.
When I started puberty at 9, my mother started muttering about my meat-heavy diet and all those hormones they put in foods. Coupled with the fact that she would routinely wail about me becoming a rebellious teenager whenever I simply expressed an opinion and it’s no surprised that I internalized a message that my puberty was a shameful, freakish thing. I was scared to even tell her that I had started my period, because I didn’t want to confirm to her all that I was growing up “fast”. So whatever you do, please don’t make this a big deal. Your daughter will sense it and feel weird things if you do.
(One thing I do remember is that my twin and I entered puberty at the same time, but we ended a year a part. Human bodies always defy expectations.)
I seem to remember you mentioning that you live in the Dominican Republic. IIRC, girls in warmer climates tend to develop sooner. And without knowing your racial make-up, girls of African decent also develop on the earlier side. Is it unusual? Yeah. But enough to be concerned? I don’t think so.
I’m somewhat reassured to read this. My daughter has zero interest in talking about it, gets almost mad/embarrassed when I try to bring it up. I got a book and showed her where I had left it in her room, making it clear that I’m available but not looking to push her into a discussion. Even thought she herself is just barely starting to sprout some breast buds (she’ll be 11 in a month but she has a constitutional growth delay and is 3-1/2 years behind her peers in bone size), some of her friends have had breasts for a while and I just want to make sure she has the right info.
My mom made kind of a muck-up of talking to me about these things so I’m trying to do it differently, but it’s difficult with a reluctant kid.
Really, I didn’t know that. I guess because everyone in my family was a late bloomer (my mom got her first period at 17!). And yes, my daughter is VERY mixed, but her mutt side (me) is the late bloomer side, while her Nordic side seem to be the big, tall ones.
I remember back in school that I was in 11th grade and looked very different from most of my classmates, some of which looked decidedly adult at the end of high school. It seemed that the tall girls would develop earlier, the scrawny ones later.
I can’t speak to “scrawny”, but it seems to me that girls who develop earlier tend to end up on the shorter side once they stop growing. My older sister was the tallest kid all throughout elementary school. But once she got to high school, she was suddenly Shortie McShortie. This makes sense to me. Your growth spurts really takes off in puberty, so if puberty is truncated your growth probably will be as well.
But as I said earlier, appearances can be deceiving. I have always had small boobs and been on the skinny side. Few would have guessed that I was more “advanced” physiologically than most of the other girls. It was always amusing having classmates talk to me about periods in a patronizing way, when I was more of an expert than they were.
What are you guys worried about? It’s going to happen, and it’s a good thing!
If you make it a big deal, then she’ll think it’s a Big Deal. But it’s not, not at all. It’s a perfectly human, natural thing, and should be treated as such.
Well, she doesn’t read The Dope, so she doesn’t know any of this. As far as she is concerned everything is still exactly the same it was 3 days ago.
This is why I come here.
We have a niece who suddenly started developing around the same age as the OP’s daughter. My SIL, who’s a nurse, promptly took her to the doctor. The doctor told SIL to stop purchasing regular brand milk becauise of the hormones. She did, and our niece’s development slowed to a halt. She didn’t need a bra until she was going into the 6th or 7th grade.
I don’t understand why people blame hormones in food for early puberty.
It seems completely self-evident that if that was an issue, it would affect boys as well as girls.
Doses of female hormones big enough to trigger puberty certainly would cause noticeable changes in males as well.
Except that estrogen and estrogenics are more common in food than testosterone and androgens. And do you think we’re not seeing some issues in boys, like greater adiposity, even though it’s not affecting their puberty onset?
I’m firmly in the “I dunno” camp on this one, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think, “but boys aren’t maturing faster” is a reason to discount the theory entirely.
(That being said, chicken in the US doesn’t have hormones, and hasn’t since they were banned for use in poultry in 1959.)
By the way - 30% of girls start puberty by eight. It isn’t uncommon at all. A little less common in white girls than in black girls. Nutrition seems to be a big part of it, but from what I can tell, nutrition here is “getting enough calories” - although both hormones in food and soy have been linked to early onset puberty.
My daughter is short and skinny. At fourteen she is five two and ninety pounds (if that). I was a late bloomer, and I’m the tallest in my family at 5’6" I’m a little surprised that she hasn’t started menstruating in the past year, but not surprised it didn’t come earlier than that. Most of her friends were nine or ten - she is the last holdout (and the oldest) in her friend group. (She is also a Dr. Who loving, D&D playing geek - we figure she’ll get a date in college :). She really can be very pretty, and will very likely, should she choose, be a knockout when she grows into her body, finishes with braces and acne, and washes her hair - but skinny late blooming geek girls are sort of a blessing)
I will agree that having a daughter who was thirteen before she even started to look like a teenager - and still looks her age or younger - is a relief. I have a girlfriend whose daughter hit puberty at nine, is all curves and a thirteen looks nineteen. And dresses nineteen. And its impossible to explain to her why she should be a little more discrete. My daughter is destined to be carded for rated R movies when she is 25 - her daughter gets hit on by college guys at thirteen (who think she’s a college girl). Thirteen year olds do not need Eva Longoria’s body - it makes life sort of difficult.