When the nurse came to tell the girls about periods at my primary school, I was already menstruating. The woefully inadequate preparation for menarche that she gave us was already too late for me.
Add to that that I am autistic and was undiagnosed at the time and the result was that puberty was a terrifying and traumatic experience for me. My body changed without warning and without me wanting it to, suddenly I was the object of sexual harassment (including when in school uniform, the sick paedo fuckers), my chest was trussed up into this ridiculous uncomfortable contraption to support the unwanted bags of fat that had materialised on it, I had pubic hair, which my molesters commented on whilst sexually assaulting me, and I had to track periods (and put hard toilet paper in my knickers if I was caught out at school) and tolerate being in pain for several days each month. I had yet to leave primary school when all this happened to me.
Autistic girls made up 40% of Tavistock referrals, despite a single-digit percentage of girls being autistic. I suspect that puberty trauma was a driving factor for many of these girls in wanting to become boys. I know that I wanted to become a boy. These autistic girls do not need puberty blockers nor cross-sex hormones: they need to be prepared for puberty before it hits them and given ongoing support through it.
All girls need support and preparation for puberty that doesn't look like what I got: a single session with a nurse, delivered too late. They need ongoing support. Red Boxes are an excellent first step, ensuring that no schoolgirl ever need use loo roll again, but girls need more warning of period pain and guidance on how to cope and when to say "I'm in too much pain for this", they need guidance on bra fitting because the first ever bra I was bought was deliberately too big "so I could grow into it" and that warped my idea of good fit for decades, and they need prior warning of how shitty men and boys can be and guidance on how to recognise male sexual predatory behaviour and evade predatory men and boys.
These sessions need to be repeated in more detail as the girl ages. They should be designed for neurodivergent girls first because material designed for ND girls will work for NT girls but not necessarily the other way around. And there should be no religious opt-out permitted because this isn't sex ed, it's life-whilst-female ed.
Finally, school changing rooms should all be single-sex, none of this "mixed up until eight" nonsense. If my primary changing room had been single-sex, my molesters would not have been allowed to enter it and I would have known they were up to no good had they done so against the rules. Because it was mixed, they had every right to walk in.