My girls are growing up.  It seems like just yesterday, the oldest was a baby, but now even the baby is hardly a baby anymore!  The oldest is now nine — which means time to tackle “those” topics (you know — those topics) with her.  We chose to do this through a group class, and it worked really, really well.

Maidens by His Design, by Doran Richards, is a course written for girls ages 8 and up.  It addresses all that girls need to know about their monthly cycles and the changes their bodies are going through (or about to go through) as they hit puberty.  It does so thoroughly, from a godly worldview, and without getting into the mechanics of anything that young, unmarried girls really don’t need to know yet. 🙂

Because our class was mostly young ladies from the lower end of the age range, I would have liked for the information to be organized a little differently.  The course is more thorough than what most of us got in middle school or high school.  In fact, many, many women don’t know half of this stuff until they start trying to conceive.  Because it’s so thorough, and because it uses the “why” of everything as a foundation, concepts that are completely new to an 8- or 9-year-old are thrown at them without any explanation.  (They are eventually explained, but they aren’t explained at the moment of introduction.)  For the same reason, physical changes are also introduced in an essentially opposite order from that in which they occur.  If the mother or class teacher is simply aware of these things, though, she can adapt.

The class is not designed to be taught by a single teacher to a group of girls without their mothers present.  It’s designed for mothers and daughters to do together.  One way it can be used, though, is in a group setting, with one mother leading and all the other mothers present with their daughters.  Done this way, we found that our girls found the subject less intimidating and less boring, because a social aspect was introduced.  It gave them an opportunity to hear a multitude of perspectives (because every woman’s experience is slightly different).  And because we were all matter-of-fact about the subject, it exposed them to this matter-of-fact perspective from multiple sources, causing all of them to view it matter-of-factly, as well.

I would definitely do it this way again.

Disclosure: I know Doran.  She’s a sweet Christian lady with a real passion for this subject. 🙂  And that’s her photo above, from the Blessing God’s Way website.