We Have A Lot to Process

Today when I picked her up from a playdate, Laura pulled a little plastic bag out of her backpack. "Look what I got."  She gave me a look that I couldn't read. It was kind of wide-eyed and foreboding with a touch of nine year-old theatrics thrown in.

I looked in the bag.  It was an Always maxi pad sample, a tiny deodorant, and a little booklet.  "Ah," I said.  "Look at that."

She said, "We watched a video.  All the girls got called out of the classroom, and we said, 'Are we in trouble?' But we went and watched a movie.  And one girl said she had to go back to the classroom because it was too much for her.  And we got to ask questions and got goody bags."

Then I remembered having gotten a letter about this event.  It said that the fourth-grade girls would be watching a video and having a discussion about puberty, led by the school nurse. We could opt out if we wanted. I read it and then kind of forgot about it. My two kids together bring home a ream of paper a week, and I am pretty much scanning for things I have to do, you know? Like last Thursday, my preschool carpool buddy dropped Hank off and said, "You and I are trouble for not sending in our decorated turkeys."  I was all, "Our whosiwhatford?"  She goes, "Yeah, it's a piece of yellow paper they brought home.  Or it's not really yellow, just yellowish and the whole family is supposed to decorate it." I was like, "Oh for the love."

So I forgot about the puberty discush.  But when she brought home the maxi pad, I was ready to fully engage.

I asked, "So what did the video talk about?" and "What kinds of questions did people ask?" and stuff like that.  I always try to avoid leading the witness. She told me the video was called "Always Changing," and she gave me a pretty comprehensive play-by-play.  I thought she had known more about this stuff than she in fact had, it seemed like some of the whole period thing took her by surprise.  How many times does that happen in life, that your kids know less than you thought?

I said, "So that was a lot of information for you to take in.  What did you make of it?"

She said, "It was horrifying."

I think what she was was a bit embarrassed.  And nervous, maybe. She kept talking, and then I talked, and she talked some more, and it was one of those absolute parental decathlon moments where you're listening to their words and also what's behind the words and trying to be sure they're informed while reassuring them that life is not changing overnight.  All in the time it took me to drive one mile in light traffic.  We can both talk fast.

I guess maybe I should have told her all this already, but it had not come up.  Or actually, that's not true, it had come up and she had never pursued it, and I don't believe in answering questions that are not being asked.

And horrified or not, she was also quite interested, because after we got home, Matt's mom arrived, and Laura sat her down in the dining room and told her all about it.

Then I noticed that this whole video/booklet/sample bag is a Procter & Gamble thing that they bundle up send out to schools.  The letter had said as much.  I went to their website and watched the video.  They have one for fourth grade and one for fifth grade, girls and boys.  I have mixed feelings about that.  On one hand, I remember, fondly, my friends and I poring over a little booklet put out by the Tampax people when I was a girl.  Though I don't think we were in fourth-grade, and I don't think it came from school.  Of course, by that time I'd read Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, thus earning the equivalent of a Ph.D. in menstruation theory.  I think I got good information from the little Tambrands book when I was a kid, and the "Always Changing" book Laura brought home was well-written, engaging, and age-appropriate.

Thought I couldn't resist saying, "Ew, a pituitary gland, gross!"

But in the middle of the booklet, right after a discussion of appocrine and eccrine sweat, was a two-page layout detailing the fine Secret family of antiperspirant/deodorant products, with a little picture of each of the seven (!) kinds of "protection," in scents like "Cocoa Butter Kiss," "Rockstar Rose," and "Va Va Vanilla."  I didn't realize that deodorant products were being packaged and marketed with such an eye to tween appeal, I guess I am way behind.

Does my nine year-old really need to decide between "clinical strength" and "invisible solid" at this point in her development?

I just pointed it out to Laura and said, "Look, this is an ad. The people who made the video also want to sell you their brand of deodorant.  This is a lot of good information, but they're also making it seem like needing 31 flavors of deodorant is a normal part of growing up."  She got it; I mean, critical media studies is like a key part of modern parenting, and these kids get it.  Children with even glancing exposure to television and the internet know they are being sold to, hard.  I do not think that commercials are poisonous, not at all, I just think it's something to point out and teach awareness of.

But it made me think, how difficult would it be for a schools to come up with a non-branded, purely educational unit on puberty and development and use that?  I know it wouldn't come with a snazzy goody bag.  But we are not talking about a lot of content: a twenty-five minute film and a discussion session.

Is it just that it's so easy to use P&G's?  And it's free? Is their material of such a high quality that it is worth the in-school advertising?        

And then I wondered, is this information being given to kids earlier, i.e., at a younger age, because children are reaching puberty earlier, or because the corporate profit-motivation is to create brand-awareness earlier?

I didn't really blink at the four pages of different maxi pad products at the end of the booklet, because that seemed more on-topic, and it even made me nostalgic for my Judy Blume days.  But the Secret deodorant thing seemed obtrusive.  What do y'all think?  Are your elementary schoolers hearing about this stuff already?

So yes, we have a lot to let percolate in our little brains.

After we talked, Laura said, "Okay, the only man in the whole world who can know about this puberty issue is Daddy."

I was like, "Oh, naturally."  I assured her, no other male could even comprehend such a phenomenon.