I just remembered earlier how very badly my own mother had handled it. As far as I remember, my sister and I were just hanging out in my bedroom - I must have been about 14 and she was about 12.5. We very rarely hung out together so my mother must have been spying on us to get us both in the same place. My mother opened the door, chucked a pack of sanitary in on the bed, said "Here, you might need these" and shut the door again. My sister and I just looked at each other and burst out laughing, it was so ridiculous. She never said anything more about. She was so obviously paralysed by embarrassment that I actually felt sorry for her. Lucky we already knew about periods etc, and were quite late starting (in my case anyway- my sister and I both started at the same time).