To be disturbed at the lack of knowledge of periods among DD's friends?

[FortunesFave]

They're all 12-13 and attend a small school in Australia. They do have sex education but separately...so they've had lessons with the girls and lessons with the boys but never together.

yesterday DD said she and her friends were talking together about periods and a boy from a nearby group (they're friends with these boys...all lovely lads) came over and asked what a tampon was.

Wtf? Why wouldn't they know? It seems his friends...3 of them and him didn't know.

DD said they definitely didn't know...they then all discussed periods together and one of the girls thought that "A clump of eggs comes out sometimes when you have your period"

DD worked out that she thought that the occasional blood clot was 'a clump of eggs"

My DD knows all about the workings of the female body...because I've told her...do people really not discuss these things with kids this age?

Sad that there is so much ignorance about this in general, and of course boys and men should be aware to. Interesting today that I read about Gabby Logan mentioning that men should be more aware about the menopause as well.

@Bells3032 we have a Prime Minister who does not know about condoms, so you are not alone!

I only found out about periods when I was 10/11 because I asked why there were little bins in public loos and sometimes bags. I was sat in the back of the car she didn't even look at me.

Never even discussed sex

My children were all born in the 1980.

When one of my DD's was about 14/15 she asked me to have a chat with one of her friends because she (the friend) has some questions about periods and couldn't ask her own mother.

A friend of my other, younger, DD, they were about 16/17 at the time, was adamant that women had a hole for pooing and another one for everything else: peeing, periods, sex and birth.

Apparently her mother had told her this 'fact' and nothing would persuade her otherwise. Clearly something was severely lacking in the sex education at her school.

Off the back of this thread, I have just had a conversation with my 13 yo DS. He did know about periods (but didn't realise women got them every month for almost a week until about the age of 50) and he did know about sanitary towels and tampons but wasn't sure about the differences. I've also told him about period pants now.

I have always been quite open with him but I think sometimes they need to be given a bit more info to join up the dots of all the different bits of information and make sense of it.

There's 17 years between my husband and I and we both had the same experience of sex ad at school. Both split into boys and girls in 2 classrooms, girls had a female teacher and boys a male. We got told that periods are painless, you use something like a nappy to catch the blood and the most blood loss is a tablespoon in a week. He got told that penises get hard, to have sex you put a penis in a vagina. No talk of other genders, actual facts, consent, period products, contraception,etc. When I got my period aged 16 I had no idea what was happening. I'd heard friends complain about stomach cramps or running out of tampons and I felt ashamed to ask what they were. Even my mother didn't discuss it with me!

@vixxau

Maybe the boy was trying to get them to talk about sticking things in their vaginas, and was feigning ignorance?

That's what I wondered. It sounds like exactly the sort of thing 12-13 boys would have done when I was that age. And maybe the girls really did know what a tampon was, but didn't want to discuss it in front of a teenage boy, so said they didn't know.

Its not just ignorant teenage boys that don't know enough about periods. DD (at an all girls school) was having a heavy period and her male teacher told her to hold it in till break time.....

What??! Did she correct him?

@Clymene

Off the back of this thread, I have just had a conversation with my 13 yo DS. He did know about periods (but didn't realise women got them every month for almost a week until about the age of 50) and he did know about sanitary towels and tampons but wasn't sure about the differences. I've also told him about period pants now.

I have always been quite open with him but I think sometimes they need to be given a bit more info to join up the dots of all the different bits of information and make sense of it.

I knew it wasn't common knowledge among boys...thank you! Some posters here have been a bit rude suggesting the boys were just looking for entertainment rather than knowledge but DD knows them well, they're nice respectful boys and they were genuinely interested.