Yeah, that happened in my sleep! 6 times! I’m a very heavy sleeper.
WhyNot, what got in the way of your telling your Mom, who had been open with you, with good lines of communication, what was going on? (Sorry if this is an ignorant question with an obvious answer to anyone who knows what that circumstance is like. Or asking for information that you do not want to share. Please tell me to mind my own business if I should.)
Mighty Girl, so you, without a body that claimed you were older than you were, had the ability to deal with inappropriate attention that you still got. From what you’ve said actual rape and creeps are not your worry but that inapprpriate attention is. Do you doubt your ability to coach your daughter in telling people off like you did? She may be a people pleaser but she has you for a coach and your experience proves that that practiced skill is important with breasts or without. (For boys too btw. Comes in handy with all sorts of peer pressure circumstances.)
You know how sometimes it’s the things we don’t even realize we’re saying that messes our kids up - not the things we worry about? Mom never liked or trusted my stepbrother, who she knew was molested himself during a time when he lived in a foster home. She was always very careful to tell me that if he ever “hurt me” or “touched me inappropriately” (and yes, I knew what that meant) that I should call her and she’d get me home safely. We had a safe word and everything, just in case I couldn’t tell her openly what was going on due to the presence of someone in the room with me or something. All very solid advice that was very trendy in parenting magazine articles about kids of divorce at the time.
Here’s what I internalized: “If [stepbrother] hurts me and I tell Mom, I won’t be able to see my Dad anymore.”
:smack:
Thank you.
Looking back is there any way should could have said it that would have encouraged you to ask for help better?
Did you ever tell either of your parents later?
Again, let me know if I am asking things that you’d rather not answer. We on a message board have no right to know, but your answers might help some of the rest of us parents avoid some mistakes.
I’ve given that a lot of thought, and…no, I really don’t think so. I don’t blame any of the adults in the situation. The responsibility lies squarely with him.
And that’s where the maturity angle comes in: I was smart enough to make a connection that my mom completely missed (telling=no Dad), but not mature enough to understand that there are some prices not worth paying, and to trust that other arrangements for visitation would have been made. Given my maturity and life skills at the time, no, I don’t think there was anything different they could have/should have done, short of delaying puberty a year or so to let my brain catch up with my body. (Not that I think anyone ever suggested it back then.)
Not willingly. It came out a couple of years later at a slumber party my freshman year of high school, and drama ensued. A girl at the party told the school counselor, who called my parents, who lost their shit. My brother was confronted, stole the car, ran away and became a homeless crack whore for a while. Good times.
Thanks for your consideration. I mean that. But I’m at the point in my healing where it’s simply another thing that happened to me. It holds no emotional power to harm, and I don’t think it’s something I need be ashamed of or hide, so I have no more problem sharing it than I do my recipe for Shepherd’s Pie. 
But sadly, no, I don’t have a whole lot of parenting advice around the girl end of things. What would I do differently? I’d raise my son to be disgusted and appalled at the idea of rape, or teasing a girl in class about her breasts. I’d raise him to understand that rape has a lot of faces and that enthusiastic consent is a better rubric than no means no, and I’ve tried to do that. Setting aside the puberty delaying issue, I wouldn’t raise my daughter differently, because the problem is with our sons.
(Allspice, that’s the secret to a great Shepherd’s Pie.)
I’m certainly no MD, but have been finding this discussion fascinating. From what the internet tells me, it looks like the side effects of Lupron can be pretty moody - depression, anxiety, insomnia. Many girls get breakthrough bleeding when they start. And memory issues would be the other possibility that could be really problematic in an eight year old.
Again thank you WhyNot and without question you are correct … allspice does the trick! 
Dangerosa, yes there are possible side effects … although I’ve been taught it is usually pretty well tolerated.
In our house, those would send us straight to no - too much family history of serious and chronic depression and anxiety to risk triggering it in an eight year old through medication unless it was needed for her long term health.
If anyone is interested in a follow up…
The weirdest thing happened:
False alarm. I repeat, false alarm.
My daughter did have breast buds, and a first battery of tests showed that she had elevated estrogen. No other “symptom” of puberty was present, and a sonogram determined that she just had very firm fat pockets (not the doctor’s words, I don’t remember them now). Further tests found nothing else.
We saw two pediatric endocrinologists (I wanted to make double sure the first was right), and neither gave me a straight explanation for this. The best theory is that a) she was eating “too much” soy (I am mostly vegetarian and if you have kids you know that they want to try whatever you are eating, no matter what’s in their plate), and b) she gained nearly 4 lbs in our month-long trip to Europe, while still within the normal range (she’s tall), it is quite a rapid weight gain for an 8 year old. She may be overly sensitive to weight gain and/or soy products. The doctors suggested I do not give her any soy products, and went back to our regular diet of veggies and organic meat.
Once we came home and stopped with the butter and cream, she lost the weight in a matter of days. Breast buds were gone and estrogen is back to normal. Still no firm answer about what happened. Oh well. I got down the ledge and poured my husband and I an adult beverage and breathed a sigh of relief.
BTW, I bought her some books about puberty, she read them and declared “I DO NOT want to grow up”. Imagine my trying to convince my child that puberty is not so bad. ::dubious::