Why was DM so weird about puberty, how do I move on?

[81Hannah81]

I started puberty relativley early I think, started developing about 9, face full of spots by 10, periods by 11. All in primary school basically.

DD1 is 8 now so getting to that age, and when I look back at my experience it seems like my mum just completely abandoned me and it's actually really affecting how I feel about her.

She never told me about puberty, periods or any of it; I was so freaked out and ashamed when I started my period I didn't know I was meant to tell anyone so I didn't have proper sanpro, just rolled up tissue in my knickers. She never mentioned me wearing a bra until she bought me a crop top when I was about 14 and was pretty much fully developed (sorry if tmi).

I was only allowed one bath and hair wash a week, no face wash, no deoderant, I felt so disgusting and was ostracised and humiliated at school because I didn't know how, or have the means to look after myself properly.

If I think of sending DD off to school so sad and confused, with a bunch of tissue in her knickers, I'm just heartbroken. The thought of it destroys me. How could my mum have done that to me?

I don't see me and DD skipping in to M&S for some first bra ceremony, but I want to guide her, say what do you need, what can i get you? I just don't understand why my mum left me to deal with it all alone. It feels like she wanted me to suffer!

I self harmed for most of my teens and ended up in hospital when I was 17 - that seemed to snap her out it somehow, she suddenly seemed to be my mum again.

I've become quite preoccupied with this but can't talk to anyone irl because I feel so ashamed. Did anyone else go through this, or know why it happened? How can i get over it?

my mum yelled at me for not throwing away my pads properly (I think one came unwrapped in the bin). But she'd never taught me anything about proper hygiene so how can she get mad if I didn't follow it

@ItWasNotOK I know- if my mother had bought me pads I probably wouldn’t have leaked on the bed or my clothes but she didn’t so 🤷‍♀️

Reading this has brought back horrible memories. I am sorry you have had such an awful time.

I lived with foster people and when I told her I had blood on my skirt she handed me a packet of pads and that was literally it. They sent me to school the next day with the bloody skirt on . Why the school staff didn't help I do not know.

I have two boys and a girl and while the boys haven't asked anything I would answer if they did and DD is nearly 17 and has no issues around periods. I sometimes feel weird when I see her leaked on pants chucked in the laundry basket for all to see but I fully accept that might be my issue. I just wish I understood it. I'm glad she has no issues.

OMG 🤦🏻‍♀️ that sounds a horrible thing to go through! So glad you are out of it and have the good sense & empathy to be so much better than your mum!! She was rubbish and that's definitely HER FAULT!! My mum wasn't great at talking about periods (shes a nurse!!) I remember her coming into my bedroom where the airing cupboard was when I was 17 ( I kid you not ) ask me really embarrassed "did I know about the birds & bees?) I mumbled yes & she was out of there quick as a flash!! I think I had some babysitting jobs NY then so I didn't even ask & bought my own! I went on holiday with my BF when 18 & was in such pain I said I think I've got cystitis (which she got all the time by the cream everywhere! I had to go out & get my own! Ouch! She's still a rubbish communicator & buries her head every time. I tell my own dd everything now!! So uptight its unreal!! Feel sorry for her! What annoys me now is she hugs the girls now & tells them she loves them but she doesn't to me! She did once after lockdown & I nearly fainted! When I hug her she stays still like a tree🌳 emotionally absent or what!?! You are better than that! Be glad xxxx

I remember learning everything from the magazines too. We were not allowed them, obviously, but we could get them from friends, especially the ones with older sisters who had a stash of back numbers they would sometimes clear out and give away, like fabulous contraband treasure. My feminine information was usually surrounded by weirdly retro pop heart throbs :) I have a huge affection for David Essex because of this context.

It's funny to think now that as boys reportedly pored over women's bodies in smuggled pornography, we were just as desperate for material about women's bodies but in a far more utilitarian sense. Our magazines were, in a way, about exactly the same subject matter.

My heart goes out to those of you who were so badly treated. I was very embarrassed with my mum and she wasn't great in some ways but at least I was always allowed and encouraged to keep clean.

To this day, even though I am probably nearing the end of my days where it's relevant, I still get flooded with a soothed, calm feeling of relief, almost sleepy, when I see a drawer or a shelf full of packets of san pro. I was a toilet paper girl too, and I found it very stressful.

My daughter is 11 and is embarrassed about all this stuff and I am afraid she might have caught it from me, much as I have tried to be open. I gave her a book (recommended on here) which I read before giving it to her and it's got everything she needs to know in it. I need to talk more about this stuff though to make sure she doesn't need to start the conversation if there is stuff she needs to talk about. I think it's far too soon for her to need san pro, but giving her some is at least a way of opening a conversation.

Sorry I wanted to link to the book as I thought it was really good - friendly, practical and unscary www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1847809480/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?psc=1&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&ie=UTF8

I was born in the 80's and this topic was covered in phse lessons from age 10 in school. Boys went off to the library to learn about puberty and girls stayed in the classroom. They also handed out some starter packs of sanpro for everyone. I think mum showed me where she kept her sanpro after that lesson and told me to help myself.
So I imagine similar happens in schools now.

@TheMandalorian that happened in the 80s, we got a starter pack.

My mum never really discussed anything with me, she left it to the school.

Happy to point out the fact I had breasts, to the point I started walking with a hunch to try and hide them, but wouldn't buy me a bra.

I also used to run out of sanpro regularly. My mum had gone through the menopause, so none in the house.

She also refused to buy deodorant, and insisted that washing underarm everyday and a splash of talc was adequate. I bloody stunk!

I hid my knockers and threw them away as I was too embarrassed to put them in the wash.

Sex was also dirty in our house. She assumed I was off with every Tom, Dick and Harry from a young age. I absolutely wasn't.

No way will I be like that with my daughter. I discuss periods with her, although she hasn't started yet, she asks questions and is happy and not at all embarrassed.

Although I did hide my knockers (!), I meant knickers!

My mum one day gave me a pack of san pro, and then when I came to need it, it was no longer in my wardrobe. The closest we ever got to talk about sex was when I had a 24 year old bf and I was 16 and she said about being careful not to get pregnant!

My mum is in her late 50s now and she was the same with me. I started my period in 1994.

She didn’t speak to me about periods, even though I remember innocently asking as a child.

I found a pack of huge thick pads in the back of a cupboard as a teen, so I assumed they were for me. I didn’t tell her when I started and when I ran out of pads I used to have to pluck up the courage for days to ask for more. I didn’t get pocket money, so couldn’t buy my own and would have been too embarrassed.

All of my friends used Always or Bodyform in their cute little plastic packets and I had these huge bulking pads that bunched up in the middle, so I’d leak. I envied them so much and worried they’d see mine and tease me. She didn’t buy me deodorant or razors or skin care either. I just had to use whatever I could find in the house. I went on a school residential trip and I was the only one without body spray/deodorant/shower gel. I had a bar of soap and that was it. I had one bra from a sale rail. It wasn’t until I started to earn money and go shopping with friends that I got measured properly.

I didn’t have any make up. I remember once coming back from a friend’s with nail varnish on and she said I looked like a tart.

No advice about sex, boys, alcohol etc.

I completely understand the shame. Even now I don’t think I could speak to my friends about it.

I didn't know anything about periods when I started at 9, there wasn't any sex education in primary school, I was the first girl in the year to start. I having my breakfast when my mum shouted me to come upstairs, she told me I had started my periods, gave me a towel to wear & that I would get a period every month, she got me a pack of towels & wrote me a note to excuse me from swimming. She didn't tell me anything else, I suffered terrible period pains & was sent home from school several times, she never thought to tell me where she kept the painkillers or told me to take them when I needed to. As I got older I used to buy painkillers out of my dinner money, I had awful PMT & got very depressed, my mum never suggested I went to the doctors or anything to help it.

Similar experience but not exactly the same.
My mum got me first bras when i was 10 or 11, itchy uncomfortable things from a charity shop. 30a, then i wore a 32b for a long time even though i was more like a 28dd.
Period talk never really happened except when she thought I'd started but hadn't. Long story.
She probably would have been open and provided what i needed but i just didnt feel like i could go to her.

Didnt start my periods regularly until I was 14 nearly 15, things werent made readily available to me even at that age so I'd go sometimes with tissues.
Like you it seems crazy to me now and I feel let down, my aunty got me my first deodorant.
I don't have periods but keep a box in the bathroom for guests that might need anything like that. My sisters and friends stay over sometimes and I want them to be comfortable.
My best friend at school told me about her mum teaching her how to insert a tampon and showed me where the supplies were. Seemed kind of odd at the time but really thats the right way to do it.
My son has seen me inserting tampons, he probably doesnt remember but we talk about puberty and changes and the difference between girls and boys.
I think my mum just ignored it because she didnt want me to grow up and shes generally oblivious to her childrens lives.
I don't want to be like that.
Sorry you had a hard time op x

"Magazines contained good factual information. Just Seventeen was also very good. I got all my information about sex, contraception and so on from the above. If these magazines had not been available to me I dread to think what would have become of me. "

If we hadn't had magazines, I would have been utterly clueless about everything. They were always very firm on contraception too which influenced me a lot, thank God!

I had no idea there were so many of us!! 😳 My mum bought me one (gigantic) pad when I had my first period, aged 11, and then never another. Toilet paper in the knickers too. It was awful and embarrassing. Just awful. I finally started buying pads (& thought I should be hugely embarrassed about it) age 17.

Same thing w a bra. Finally bought me one aged 13 by which time I was a 34c. Never bought me another as I got bustier and bustier.

Ridiculous! What were these women thinking about?

I read j17 also, my grandma used to give me pocket money on a sunday night and i would spend it monday morning on j17.
I loved that magazine.
The good old days.
Nobody buys magazines anymore, thank god when you see what teen vogue are publishing online.
I know its bad to say but im so glad I've only got a son, hes coming to the age of needing serious conversations now but it seems so much easier with a boy and I'll teach him about women's puberty and women's lives too.

I think it's really important that this sort of emotional neglect is not just brushed off as something that happened long ago. It's is hugely abusive.

My mum lost her mum very young and her father couldn't cope. She was put in a convent school and suffered horrendous abuse. She told me that girls would often stuff their used rags behind the toilet cistern. Once when she was 11 (and yet to start her own periods) a nun found this stash of old bloodied rags and made my mum wash them by hand by herself.

She would be 85 now. She was very open about periods with me (I'm 43 now). I still remember her standing at the basin kindly rinsing the blood out of my knickers the day I started (explaining to me that you needed to use cold water). She bought me a selection of pads and tampons (not just cheap ones) and when I was older made sure I had money to buy my own choice. I was disorganised though and often ended up with tissue in my knickers because my pads were locked in my school locker and I was at the other end of the school! In spite of her own experiences she made sure I had everything I needed including knowledge.

My experience was similar. I was one of the last girls in my year to be told about periods and I remember being mortified as my mother lay in bed next to me in tears as she told me about it. I just wanted her to stop crying and leave me alone, it was awful. Was given a very old fashioned book on puberty to read but she said that a lot of it (aka the sex parts) didn't apply to me yet. I never got a sex talk. She told me later that she thought I'd get that at school.

I also remember another incident when I was getting a little wobbly around the thighs and bum and when I mentioned it she got annoyed with me and snapped that it was puppyfat and slammed my bedroom door.

I didn't get a bra until I was 15 despite the fact that I needed one when I was 12. I was envious of the other girls whose mothers didn't treat them like little kids still. My best friend was flat chested at 12 and her DM got her bras regardless! And there was me in my vest with boobs spilling out. Other girls at school talked about me in my vest during PE and swimming. I eventually graduated to a crop top but I had to suggest buying a bra myself eventually when we were in M&S because she wouldn't have done it.

Also remember her complaining about me showering too much and saying that I didn't clean myself properly and she should do it (I was 13 FFS!) but I refused to let her. Bizarre.

I remember being on a family holiday when I was 18 and getting drunk and bringing up the bra incident and telling her how awful I felt growing up. She admits it herself too and says maybe she shouldn't have had kids. My parents were great in other ways, we were well looked after (mum prided herself on being a housewife and giving us home cooked meals), nicely dressed and got nice holidays and presents etc but sadly lacking in the emotional support side.

It has affected me a bit growing up, I think it's one of the reason I've not had kids myself because I wouldn't want to do that kind of thing to someone and mess them up.

Maybe she shouldn’t have had kids?!? How did you feel when she said that? I think your mum sounds as though she was repressed and quite unhappy but that is not your fault at all.

What’s come across on this thread is how important it is to have sex education from an early age in schools. I know some people say it’s the parents job, but as we see here for loads of girls they were raised in fear and ignorance of how their body works. How can you pay attention in class and participate in sport when you’re wearing toilet roll to cope with periods?

Thinking back to all the campaigns to lower the teenage pregnancy rate when so many girls knew so little about the basics.

My mother was similar.
Although i had an older sister who didn't bother to help out there either.....

I never owned a new bra until i bought one from Poundland!
I had to wear hand me down stretched to fuck bras of my older sibling (5 yrs older than me)......i think i was given one pack of new knickers at the start of secondary school and that was it.....maybe i was bought some more later but i dont remember....

i used to get bought one pack of heavy flow sanpro and it had to 'last me' the whole period - and then i'd get moaned at for being wasteful when i asked for money to buy some more.

I'd like to say it was cos my mum didn't know any better - but she''d already been through it with my older sis...and my older sis could have stepped in to help.....
i think i was surrounded by narcs and was the black sheep of the family anyway so.....

Sorry I meant to add (but got distracted) I would hope this didn't happen in modern times but it seems it does still. Some of these stories are very sad and some are downright neglectful. Virtual hugs.
It's weird these normal bodily functions are seen as shameful still.

Gosh this thread is heartbreaking.
My mum, thankfully, was brilliant. I started my periods aged 10 - also in the mid-90s - and I can't imagine what it would have been like without her support, it was bloody hard enough. My heart goes out to everyone on this thread who didn't have that.
I was definitely the only one in my class at primary school and already felt hugely out of place being an obvious early developer - I was "the tall girl" (a joke really because i probably only grew 2 more inches from age 10) and was desperate to stop standing out.
I needed a bra & I remember going to Tammy Girl with my mum to get one - but I was so self conscious I always wore a crop top over it, in the hope that no one world know.
Being at primary school there were simply no bins in the toilets, I don't think it was even considered a possibility that they'd be needed. I was desperate for no one to find out I'd started, so I remember waiting for the toilets to be empty - old, Victorian buildings with barely a door - so I could change without anyone hearing. I still remember the fear, unwrapping a towel as quietly as possible. I still remember once, in some public toilets aged a year or so older, being absolutely astounded at hearing someone in the toilet next to me simply unwrapping sanpro audibly, and not being able to understand how they didn't care who heard.
With the lack of toilet bins i would wrap the dirty ones up in toilet paper and stuff them in my jacket pocket to empty at home. I remember some of the girls laughing at me & calling me weird because I was wearing my jacket in the playground in summer, just so I could sneak off to the loo when it was quiet. No one ever found out.
I had horrendous pains as I got to secondary school age & used to often be off sick, I would spend the first day vomiting usually. I once even vomited over my friend in a lesson aged 12 (still a good friend!) My mum took me to the GP who prescribed some really quite hardcore painkillers - which I took for years on prescription in my teens. I can't understand, looking back, why I wasn't put on the pill, as I later discovered another friend was.
Again so much shame, and acceptance of a woman's lot.
Interestingly, when a few years back the Chinese swimmer Fu Yuanhui rather matter of factly blamed her poor performance in a race on having her period & the western press went coverage mad "breaking the taboo" etc, much of the coverage in China was about the western press coverage, & how no one talks about periods here.
I do think it's cultural and connected to historical fear & control of women's bodies. I so hope the next generation are free of that.

Finally I have read this whole thread. It's heartbreaking, but also in a way comforting, to know that so many people were in the same position.

My mum didn't tell me anything. I had 'the talk' at school in what would now be year 6, and then in the summer holidays before I started secondary school, I started my period. Was at my grandads at the time, so had no pads etc, so it was a toilet paper in the pants job. I had only the initial pack of stuff that school had supplied, so that was it. I didn't speak to my Mum about it, and she neither to me, but a set of pads did arrive every so often in my bedroom. But that was it. No discussion about periods or puberty. No discussion about sex. No shopping for bras either; I went eventually with my friends and bought a crop top with my Xmas money, and then eventually bought my own bra a few years down the line.

My parents were divorced when I was 10, and my mum remarried a very strict and controlling man.
I remember telling my mum about having very bad period pains, which kept me awake at night, and her answer was, your grandma had a prolapse and told no one, you should think yourself lucky and stop moaning.

My mum is only 67. I do wonder why she was/is so utterly repressed. It makes me sad. I'm not that close to her now.
When I got engaged to my now husband she said, on seeing my engagement ring, ooh you get a lot of glass for your money these days...

Yet she is so emotionally needy with my brother and me, when it suits her, that it's laughable.

My DD is 10 now and I have been very open with her. The thought of her dealing with that I had to go through is awful.

All I knew about periods until about 12 came from that movie with Macauley Culkin and Anna Chomskey, My Girl.

Lucky I didn't get my period until 14 and by then I'd found out a whole lot of stuff from books on puberty in the library.

Something that happened last night that reminded me of this thread.

I threw an old pair of pants in the bin - they were pretty old and the elastic was gone. As I was throwing them out, my husband walked in and I immediately froze and started justifying why I was throwing them out - they're really old, they're so bobbly, they barely even stay up. He just looked at me confused and asked why I was telling him and that he didn't really care what I do with my old pants.

If it had been at home, and my mother had seen, it would definitely have been an issue. No privacy, everything had to be justified, but at the same time, nothing was ever discussed.

I had issues around throwing things out for years. I used to be a bit of a hoarder - never piles of stuff everywhere but I really struggled to just throw things in the bin and then take the bins out. Then I would have a huge purge and go the other way and throw everything in the bin.