I know, it sneaks up on you, doesn't it! You blinked and your little girl that used to run around in her ballet tutu and give you sloppy kisses is now outgrowing all her clothes (and shoes), and her body is starting to change. Her emotions are getting stronger. Is she going to get her period? What is happening? How could this be happening so soon? Is it really time for her to hit puberty? I’m not ready for this. I know those feelings well, my friend.

It wasn’t that long ago that my oldest daughter started to hit puberty and I kind of panicked I didn’t know what to do. She was changing in front of my eyes from being a kid to something else...not quite an adult...but definitely, her body was starting to head in that direction. She was getting taller, she was starting to grow breasts and I knew her period would start sometime soon. I wanted to be there for her and help her with all these transitions, but I kind of felt paralyzed. I didn’t know what to say or how much to say. I typically jump into a project with both feet so I researched and talked to people and read books and had a whole plan to go and do a weekend away and cover everything. Oh, friends, this was quite a plan, there were sessions, there was music, there was horseback riding, there was ear-piercing, there were gifts, there was symbolism. It was going to be an unforgettable weekend. I called my older sister who was years ahead of me in parenting and she listened to my carefully established, elaborate plan and said, “Lisa, if you do all that in one weekend you are going to completely overwhelm her.” Oh. I hadn’t thought about that possibility. Then she said these magic words. Why don’t you take all that and space it out and just do a little each weekend so that she has time to process it all?  Well, that made a lot of sense. I mean, who likes to be overwhelmed? Especially in the midst of change?

Then something else started happening. Our public school started to change their curriculum choices for sex ed. It was now under the umbrella of health ed from new state guidelines and I started going to all the meetings to see what was in this new curriculum. Oh friends, it was way more than just the basics. It was a lot of language that put expectations on our kids to be sexually active and experimental. Hold the phone, back the bus up? What? They are kids. That was not okay with me. Sex is for adults. There was also a lot of language that encouraged my girl to question her identity. I was really frustrated with that. Having a healthy and strong sense of identity is absolutely vital to our kids well-being. It is one of the areas that they, and lets be honest, we all struggle with. I really wanted to affirm for my daughter that being a girl was a gift. It was a good and positive thing to grow up female. It was something to celebrate.

With all these things happening, I had more and more parents reaching out to me asking for help and advice and a solution. So I created GirlTribe Nation as a means to encourage tween girls and the moms who are raising them. I have a podcast and youtube show just for moms of tween girls to encourage them. It’s called Raising Amazing Tween Girls. And I wrote a puberty and body changes online course called Growing Up Girl. I would love to tell you all about it and see if this might be helpful to you and your girl! If you have a daughter between the ages of 8-12, then you absolutely need to have a puberty education strategy that is effective, fun, and definitely not way too much to process. I want you as her mom to be involved, but I want to help you out so that you don’t feel the overwhelm that I felt. I want you to make this time a fun time of changes for your daughter. Would you join me on a webinar that I have coming up so I can tell you what I’ve learned? This webinar is only about an hour, it is FREE, and in it, I’m going to reveal to you 3 Secrets That Every Mom Needs To Help Her Tween Girl Thrive In Puberty. Sign up for this free webinar below, put it on your calendar, and plan to join me so that together, us moms can stick together, navigate this puberty thing with excellence, and support our daughters through this vital time of transition. See you soon!