AIBU to be shocked at the school

[wonderingwendy]

handing out my 11 year old dd tampons ?
i was really angry .
she knows all about periods and we have a very open relationship ,she has sanitary towels and that is the best option for me and her i believe
im just shocked as to how my little girl would even manage to get a tampon inside her .
the teacher gave it to them and they weren't even in a sex education class.

Slightly off topic, but IMO Y7 is a bit late for this kind of talk - a lot of girls these days start their periods around age 9. They should be fully clued up about all this by age 8 at the latest I think. It's a bit silly to withhold information on how the body works when it could prevent some poor girl being shocked and embarrassed when caught unawares by her period.

My mum showed me how to insert a tampon when I was little

Leg up on the bath, no holds barred demo

No messing about with glasses of water and shrieking in our house............

What a nasty thread. Op was clearly looking for some support?...advice?....anything other than this nastiness

compleatly unreasonable and totally fucked up

Oh and YABU OP, I don't understand at all what you're concerned about.

Support for what? The giving of incorrect information and hysteria over a wad of cotton?

witchety,

in all fairness it is a very unreasonyable to make a choice on another persons sanitary protection based on your own preferance.

its controlling and horrible

I can't 'support' such an unreasonable attitude towards a natural bodily function.

The school obviously needs to teach this because what you have taught her is incorrect

YABU

Bloody hell. I think I have travelled back to 1987 and my mother is posting on MN.

She had this EXACT reaction when we were given sample boxes. She rang round my friend's mums to see if any of them thought it was inappropriate and that the school shouldn't have done it. She then confiscated them.

I was embarrassed and upset, thinking I had somehow done something wrong.

I have no idea what it was all about as she was normally perfectly sensible and rational.

OP, I hope you haven't made your daughter feel how I felt.

friends'

[beats self over head with giant apostrophe]

Oooh hi Raspberry

We must stop meeting like this...............people will start to talk

Catgirl your mother sounds ace.

What on earth is your problem?

We had this talk and were given the free samples in 1987.

Tampons are not wrong or rude or dirty! If you carry on like this now, do you honestly think your daughter will trust you and want to confide in your when she gets older and interested in boys? Sorry to say that, but my mum had an attitude like yours and I never ever felt I could talk to her about anything "personal". I still can't.

This happened when i was that age in school, we were told we could leave the tampons on the desk if we felt our parents wouldn't want us to have them, everyone thought WTF when it was said but obviously it was to save earache from parents like the OP.

I feel a bit sorry for op.

I'm also not keen on using tampons at such a young age. (I do realise that her dd has not reached this stage yet). I cannot explain my reasons for thinking like this. I use tampons myself and started using them when I was about 15.

There are some pretty mean comments on here.

She is horse

I think I was horrified at the time, but now I am greatful for how no nonsense she is. She told me no one ever spoke to her about periods and when she started hers she was terrified as she didn't know what was happening. She was determined my and DSis would not go through that

She was always really open about sex and contraception too

Gosh are we back in the 70's? Tampons take a girls virginity?

Although I found the comment amount the dildo vulgar, it was the first thought that came to my mind. Tampons aren't sexual? They aren't representative of a penis. They are just an 'internal' sanitary towel.

I think being offered a tampon when you have no experience of using them is inappropriate and I feel pads would probably be more suitable for a pre-teen, but it's up to the girl in question.

I'm 40 and my mum never let me use tampons because of the 'virginity' issue. I feel it's a shame and I felt different to my friends and I would say it affected the way I felt about my vagina. I was petrified of something going up there

"all im saying is she told me she thinks they are not for her and i think its a decision parents should deal with not a teacher."

So she's decided they aren't for her? What's the big fuss then?

I was raised by my dad. He was a good parent, but couldn't bring himself to discuss periods. So I'm incredibly glad we learned about them at school, and were given samples of Tampons and Towels at school. I wasn't the only child whose parents couldn't/wouldn't discuss periods with. There is a definite need for this in school.

Tampons are not sexual either. You can't even feel them inside you actually, that reminds me of one ex boyfriend

Arf at Headless! I was just thinking how terrible it would be to lose your virginity with a tampon...
Off topic, but one of my friend's was not allowed to ride horses as there was fear about her hymen..

Apologies OP but I haven't managed to read the whole thread.

But we had the same thing 26 years ago in my rural primary school. Boys and girls were sat down and told all about periods together (to prevent boys sniggering about it if any girls started periods early).

Then girls got an extra talk about the mechanics of dealing with your period and given some sanitary towel/tampon samples. The idea was to educate you.

And we needed educating. Although my mum had told me about periods, one of my classmates wept about the idea of bleeding each month and the teacher had to comfort her. She started her period at 10. Some kids had no idea what to be prepared for.

I think 11 is way too late and there is nothing wrong with educating girls about all ways you could handle periods. So I do think that YABU.

I was thinking of the TSS angle as to why she maybe steers her dd away from tampons?

Tbh, that's who I personally avoid them.