Parenting, Health and Guidance.

THE PUBERTY YEARS

WHAT IS PUBERTY?

The term puberty comes from a Latin word called ‘pubescene’ which means that your body has started to get covered in hair. Additionally, puberty years are years normally from double figure age, that is, 10 years to 19 years. Puberty stage can also be called adolescence stage. The puberty years are years of acquiring a ‘new body’s and sexual desire. This means that the teenage-hood body changes replace the baby-hood or childhood body changes. Researchers show that puberty years can be divided into three segments: (1) Early Puberty: This may start from 10 or 11 years to 14 years. Girls and boys may start to experience development of breasts or experience wet dreams right from 11 years. (2) Mid Puberty: This starts from 14 and a half years to 17 years. And (3) Late Puberty: This starts from 17 and a half years to 19 years. Please Note: ‘ Growing children’ refers to primary pupils and ‘teenagers’ refers to secondary school students. When you critically assess growing children and teenagers between the above age brackets, you will discover that their behaviour is not the same. They behave differently. Their behaviour, their interests and all what they know keeps changing with age. Each year that passes, growing humans do not remain the same. The grow mentally and bodily. Daily, they keep evolving or changing. Based on that fact, I call upon parents, teachers or preachers who would wish to help growing children go through the puberty years successfully, that they must turn themselves from being ‘authority-heads-of-children’ to ‘authority-heads-of-adolescents’. How can that be achieved? Only through reading plenty of mind-widening books. Self-reading will enable you adopt new skills; acquire new broadened understanding and extra flexibility about how to deal with humans.

The practical task of moulding my children into responsible citizens became lighter or easier or an enjoyable responsibility because I read widely and constantly. According to my critical observation, the challenge still is that the culture of self-reading is not yet deep-rooted in the bloodstream of my people. Constantly reading of mind-widening books will help parents, teachers and preachers to realize that the best way to deal with, to live with and to tame teenagers is to be able to ‘see what goes on inside their minds’ on top of knowing their names and seeing their physical appearances; and then reason within what teenagers think and feel. The implication further is that failure to see the inside of growing children, expect conflicts with them resistance from them. Of course, after realizing that too many parents, teachers and preachers can not deeply and rightfully transform teenagers, this forced me into spending a lot of time researching so as to come up with variety of explanations of what the puberty years are about. To my discovery, the points below will help anyone maximally understand what happens to us during the puberty years:

1. The puberty stage is a period of acquiring a ‘new body’. This means that the teenage-hood body changes replace the baby-hood or childhood body changes. Puberty years are packed with complex series of changes or developments. Some are physical, some are emotional, some are rapid and others are slow. These puberty changes can be confusing and frightening if unexplained to the teenagers by their authorities. But if teenagers are fully explained about the puberty changes and it is often emphasized to them that those body changes are normal; then, puberty body changes can be very exciting to experience and can be a source of pride. Scientifically, teenage years are known for production of violent, sulky and energetic hormones. These hormones cause most teenagers to get angry, aggressive or unfriendly too soon and have excessive energy in their bodies, making it a bit difficult to control teenagers. This is why all secondary or high schools have fences around them. For what purpose? To forcefully control teenagers. Have you ever observed that primary and secondary schools have fences around them? And do you know what that means? Here is the meaning: strong fences around secondary schools are for enforcement whereas fences around primary schools are for mere protection.
2. Puberty is a stage or years between childhood and young adulthood. On average, today girls typically begin the process of entering puberty stage from 10 or 11 years; while boys at 12 or 13 years. The years of bodily puberty ( not mental puberty ) last for about 6 or 7 years. Girls usually complete their bodily puberty changes between the ages of 15 to 18 years, while boys usually complete their puberty body changes between the ages of 16 to 18 years. This is why by 18 years in most countries including Uganda; someone is by law or constitutionally regarded an adult and free to engage in sexual involvements.
3. ‘stage of puberty’ is a period when teenagers normally go through chemical reactions which cause sexual desires or impulses or feelings. In other words, this is the period when someone’s body hits sexual potentiality or maturity point of being able to impregnate ( for boys ) or being able to conceive ( for girls ) if there is skin-on-skin sexual intercourse.
4. ‘The-puberty-years’ is also a period when teenagers start to experience frequent body discharges and frequent mental sexual images. Boys start to produce ‘slippery/creamy/milky’ discharge from their penises. This is known as indicator of entry to puberty stage. On the side of girls, they also start to experience blood and mucus discharges from their vaginas. This is called menstruation of blood and that of mucus. For girls, this is their second visible sign of entry to puberty years after development of their breasts.
5. ‘puberty-age’ can also be termed as the filling-in or replacement process. The child’s body is being replaced or filled with the teenager’s body. By God’s design, puberty stage is to transform girls into young women and to transform boys into young men.
6. ‘period of puberty’ are years of mental transition. Here, there are mental indications to show that your child’s mind is shifting from being a child to a young adult. By nature ‘puberty years’ is an age of reasoning, an age of doubting and questioning anything vaguely explained by the authority figures ( mostly parents and teachers ), an age of arguing, an age of curiosity ( constant impulses of wanting to discover more about sex-related issues). It is a period of morphological changes or visible body changes.
7. Last but not least, medical statistics show that from the 19th century and backwards, the possible age when boys started to experience visible puberty body changes was 16 years and 15 years for girls. But today, the age when boys and girls start to experience visible puberty changes has dropped to 10 or 11 or 12 years for girls and 11 or 12 years for boys. This is possibly due to the chemical or organic food items we eat and drink, better nutritional diets, friendly ( less brutal parents ), the peaceful political environment we live in and exposure to sex-stimulating information.
8. Finally, puberty stage is a period that marks the start of boys’ potentiality to be able to impregnate females and girls’ potentiality to be able to conceive if there happens to be unprotected sex. There is no doubt about this. In that regard, our bodies produce visible indicators that someone has entered puberty stage. And here are the indicators. When boys start to experience wet dreams, that is the God-made indicator for us to be able to tell that they have entered a stage of being capable of impregnating girls. And when the girls start to experience flow of mucus which normally happens two years after experiencing their first-time menstruation period of blood, that is the natural or God-made sign to show them that they have entered a stage of being capable to conceive just in case they play ‘skin-on-skin’ sexual intercourse. For more emphasis, please remember that experiencing ‘wet dreams’ is the first noticeable body change for boys in puberty. While for girls, experiencing mucus flow is their third noticeable puberty body change.

As said earlier that the first noticeable puberty body change for boys is wet dreams. For most girls, it is growth of breasts; and for some few girls, it’s experiencing menstrual periods. Boys take a break, while girls go ahead to experience menstruation period as their second. Normally, two years later, they start to experience vaginal mucus flow. And it is their third puberty body change. Thereafter, growth of pubic hair is the second noticeable puberty body change for boys, while it is the fourth noticeable puberty change for girls. For both, two years after the growth of pubic hair, armpit hair in both boys and girls shows up. Armpit hair growth is fifth girls’ noticeable body change while it is third for the boys. Girls take a break while boys proceed to experience growth of beards as their fourth noticeable body change. After the appearance of all such sex-linked body changes, boys and girls will start to look sexually attractive compared to boys.

ENCOURAGING POINTS FOR YOUNGSTERS TO REMEMBER.

• (1) Puberty is nature’s way of growing up. Everyone goes through puberty. I have gone through it as well. Even your parents have gone through puberty. So, have your grand parents, religious leaders, presidents, your fierce teachers and anyone older than you. Notably, this stage of growth affects everyone’s way of thinking and acting. However, it will be remembered that if teenagers start to engage in skin-on-skin sex, the feared puberty body change is when girls start to produce eggs or ova and could conceive, while boys start to produce sperm and could impregnate girls.
• (2) Again, please Note that we do not reach puberty at exactly the same age due to hormonal and environmental differences and literacy exposure. At this puberty stage, without or less guidance, it is when teenagers are much driven by their body impulses than their minds. However, it is very helpful to realize that all people or anyone born of a woman experience or will go through this body transformation called puberty.
• (3) The changes that happen to us at puberty usually take place gradually or very slowly. We may not notice them easily but one day we do or after people’s comments. Because of the internal activity of evolving from childhood to adulthood sparked off by hormones, we start to look different and feel differently about all sort of things. Parents’ most feared changes during puberty is opposite sex attractions; that is, boys start to get attracted to girls and girls begin getting attracted to boys as well.
• (4) Adolescence is a time or stage of growing up from childhood into teenage-hood. One of adolescence’s emotional effects to teenagers is: making us feel very proud of ourselves. It is also period when one’s body starts to react to sexual desires and when we start to make mental fantasies, that is, drawing pictures of naked boys or girls in our minds mainly when we are idle of what to do.
• (5) Some science teachers have named nicknamed puberty stage as a ‘rebellious stage’. I also agree with them. This is when we all try to form our own personality. It is really a tough time a tough time for most children without thorough parental guidance. Adolescence is a stage in every person’s life which comes with sudden and surprising body and emotional changes.

WHEN DO BOYS ENTER INTO THEIR IMPREGNATING STAGE?

For human males, no matter the age, young as we may look on body and mentally but the time we experience first our wet dreams; automatically that experience welcomes us into the ‘impregnating stage’. The message is that to start experiencing wet dreams is a natural indicator that human males’ sperm has reached a point of maturity. So it can fertilize or impregnate an ovum, if given an opportunity. This further means that anytime boys engage in skin-on-skin or unprotected sexual intercourse; they can impregnate girls or women if they’re also in their ‘mucus-flow’ days. Consider this example. In the UK, a boy became a father at 13 years. Of course, it is shocking, isn’t it? Yes, it is. While I was still in the UK, it was on Saturday, February 14, 2009, the Sun Newspaper run a headline of Alfie Patten, 13 years who became the youngest daddy in British history with Chantelle as mummy at 15 years. Their little baby was named Maisie. Medical proof is that boys can get girls pregnant by the time they start to experience wet dreams. Why? Because by that time, their sperm is mature enough to fertilize a female ovum. Teenage pregnancies are a sign that childhood innocence about sex-related issues really nolonger exists. Or, there is no detailed parental or school counselling about how to avoid unwanted sexual consequences. Not telling youngsters anything about sex-related issues is equally dangerous as explaining sex-related issues to them using lies. They need to be guided with life facts. So parents, teachers and preachers please make young boys know at what age they’re capable of impregnating girls because most young people fall into such incidents ignorantly. Teenage parenthood means: ‘ mentally young parents’ or ‘ teenage children raising a child’.

WHEN DO GIRLS ENTER THEIR CONCEIVING STAGE?

Even when girls start to grow breasts and experience menstruation, they can’t conceive before starting to experience flow of vaginal mucus. Mucus flow plays a master role in the fertilization process. Scientifically, when young girls start experience mucus-flow, that is the God-made-indicator which indicates that girls have entered their conceiving stage. In case they play skin-on-skin sex, there are high chances of getting pregnant. No matter the age of the girl, but starting to experience flow of vaginal mucus, this marks the girl’s potentiality to conceive if she plays unprotected or ‘skin-on-skin’ sexual intercourse with any boy who might already be in his impregnating stage. In my opinion, it is important for parents, teachers and preachers to tell teenagers that puberty stage is only a passing phase that leads us into adulthood. As body changes happen, they provide us with important knowledge about our own bodies. As a parent who gives light to my children, I told them several times that if any teenage boy or girl who has had a wet dream or has had flow of mucus, he/she is able to impregnate or conceive respectively; if they engage in reckless or mindless or unprotected sex. But according to my home rules, they are entitled to know about such sex-facts, but ‘sampling’ sex if they want is after their ‘form six’ national exams.

HOW IS GROWING-UP EMOTIONALLY TOUGH FOR TEENAGERS WITHOUT CONSTANT PARENTAL MOTIVATION, PARENTAL COUNSELLING AND PARENTAL GUIDANCE?

According to my faith ( a staunch believer in the Bible ); allow me ask you, “Do you think our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ would have gone through the tough and inhuman moments he went through so as to win whatever he won for human redemption, if he did not have constant parental motivation, encouragement, parental-protection from danger-causing situations, counselling and guidance from God ( his parent )?” Parents do not leave the task of grooming your teenagers to only the teachers. Be part of it. You have to take up the filthiest role of openly talking with your teenagers about different real life issues constantly. Back to the question above:

(1). Puberty is normally a very difficult time for young boys and girls on their way as they turn into young men and young women. Similarly, just as it is that to achieve one’s goal in life, you need an experienced coach nearest to you mainly to motivate you and to guide you; so is growing up. Teenagers need ‘all-round-knowledgeable’ parents and teachers to teach them what would happen to them as they grow into adults. In many ways, this transitional period can be painful to endure for teenagers without encouraging words from their parents amidst all their puberty fears and confusions.

(2). Growing up is often tough for most teenagers without emotional encouragement from their parents because most parents are mere providers of food for the body. Sadly enough, most parents are sources of negative utterances which the inner positive growth of the teenage minds.

(3). Most parents do not prepare their girls for the onset of menstruation and other major body changes; while boys are not prepared for the onset of wet dream, personal sanitation, skills on how to handle females when they grow up and other necessary life skills. In this case of lack of constant parental guidance, majority of the teenagers find themselves caught unprepared and thus failing in many basic roles. This can cause an alarming amount of fear and distress to most teenagers.

(4). Do you why some adolescents perform less impressively in class? Since puberty years are filled with new frightening experiences: bodily and emotionally, if teenagers are uneducated about such body changes, in case they experience them, they worriedly ask themselves, “what is happening to my body? Am I abnormal?” That is exactly what I asked myself when I experienced my first wet dream. If parents and teachers do not explain to teenagers what will happen to them in advance, they will grow emotionally damaged and most times unsure of who they are. More so, without parental guidance, teenagers are faced with the struggle or stress of coming to terms with their physical changes and emotional desires in their growing up. And with the coming of education, teenagers face more pressures of performing excellently in academics so as to please their parents and the school.

(5). It is a tough moment for teenagers’ growth if parents do not realize that the ‘parent-of-a-child’ has to change to parent to a ‘parent-of-an-adolescent’ as their children enter puberty. Most teenagers feel safer when being counselled by a ‘much-more-knowing’ parent or teacher rather than being counselled by someone whose mind and strength can be fooled around. The qualities of ‘a-parent-of-a-teenager’ include: (I) You must have enough leadership skills; (II) You must have broader understanding about a lot of social issues necessary for teen’s proper growth; (III) You must be extra flexible; (IV) You must correct your teenager by use of life facts (not lies); (V) You must be a constant readers of ‘commonsense-building’ books; (VI) You must be an excellent communicator; (VII) Too often, you must avoid teaching with a stick a stick in your hand; (VIII) You must lead by example; (IX) You must use your past experiences to educate your teenagers.

(6). Without constant parental guidance, teenagers face tough hurdles to overcome when it comes to forming ‘personal-identities-of-their-own.’ without a life-coach, they find it harder to accept the type of person they’re. Many feel a tendency of ‘low-self-image.’ Some don’t know how to overcome the problem of being put down by someone maybe because of their colour, height, body size or how they look! Many teenage authorities fail to understand that for teenagers to experience body changes without parental explanation is as hard as a toddler struggling to learn how to walk, how to talk or how to eat without any aid from a guardian. How can a teenager with a thin mind, rise above all such emotional pain, confusion, and low self worth without the encouraging words from the parents or guardians? In that regard, it is a hard road to proficiency or perfection without a coach! Connected to the above, teenagers are also faced with a hard task of defining or working towards who they want to become in society. During the ‘puberty-years’ is when teenagers experience frequent sexual demands and frequent pressure to live to the expectations of their parents and teachers at the same time trying to determine their beliefs and goals. Practically speaking, goal-definition is really hard without the needed constant guidance from parents. Through my intensive self-reading of ‘commonsense-building books’, I have spotted that the main pressure areas for teenagers are: (I) Trying to be like those whom they think look best; (II) Doing things to please parents; (III) Pressure from teachers for classroom high grade performance; (IV) Peer pressure for lovers. Miserably, if parents do not engage in extra self reading of ‘commonsense-increasing’ books so as to turn themselves into reliable mentors to their teenagers; the number of teenagers facing high levels of damaging stress shoots up every day.

(7). Without constant verbal parental counselling, puberty years can turn out to be years of violence and engaging in all sorts of anti-social behavior. This is the period when teenagers may start teasing or challenging the mind power of authority figures: at school, at home; as many get into clashes with police and organize strikes at schools over trivial issues. These are all done because it is the stage when we all try to assert our own identity built based on our swallow interpretation of the world. However, at this stage of young adolescents’ development, they will greatly benefit from the friendship and guidance of mentally older daddies, mummies and classroom mentors who can act as role models to advise them through this difficult, demanding and changing period of life.

(8). Many parents and teachers seem to forget that during adolescence, young boys and girls may have impulses to experiment or ‘taste’ sexual intercourse. The challenge for most parents, most teachers and most preachers who do not engage in self reading of ‘nature-scanning’ books is that they ignorantly believe that a teenager at 12 or 13 years is far too young to be even thinking about having a boy-lover or a girl-lover. For the adults out there, can you think of it this way? When did you first have crushes or sexual feelings for a girl or boy? I wish I would look straight into your eyes and see how you try to lie as you answer that question. To me, I think this is a good question to help you change your belief that your teenager at 12 or 13 years can’t have sexual feelings for an opposite person. Apart from the emotional sexual stimulants from the visual and audio media and the food we eat, the onset of menstruation in girls and wet dreams in boys; trigger erotic or sexual dreams, thus thinking about boys or girls for trial intercourse. Because I have gone through it, I know it for fact that the most difficult area for parents, teachers and preachers to teenagers is sexual issues. Emphasis: without constant parental counselling, teenagers often experience series of difficulties of identity crisis and coming to terms with their sexual impulses. Sadly, most parents, teachers and preachers who do not read widely are also facing difficulties to believe or to accept that sexual desires/impulses can start at 12 or 13 years.

(9). If parents, teachers and preachers do not swallow their fear and show me teenagers the right way to handle their sexual desires, what do you think will happen next? Believably, teenagers will engage in sexual intercourse with their shallow minds. Many parents still think that keeping teenagers in the dark of not knowing about sex-related facts, is the best way to term their sexual urges. That is so deadly! The unfailing technique is: if parents, teachers and preachers would like to discourage young people from early sex experimentation, to be effective in that, better come forward and teach them the ‘age-appropriate’ sexual issues; than leaving them to discover for themselves or by themselves. So, if parents, teachers and preachers want teenagers to ‘be careful’, show them the sexual dangers and how to overcome them. Acknowledge to them that at one moment when they are of the right age, they will ‘sample’ sexual intercourse because it is human and normal. Please do not forget to show them the right way to avoid early pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS. According to my observation, it is a failing method for parents, teachers and preachers to continue using threats that ‘sex is bad’ as a form of keeping teenagers away from ‘tasting’ sex, without explaining to them how safe to engage in it if they grow up. What happened next when God told Adam in Genesis 2:15-17; “You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do, you will die the same day.” From my youngest years; parents, teachers and preachers have preached their usual statement about sex that ‘sex is bad’, better abstain till marriage. If that strategy works, why is it that the number of teenagers conceiving in secondary schools is skyrocketing? To me, this fact takes me back to the truth that threats like ‘sex is bad’ without showing teenagers directions how safely to engage in it when time comes, follows on deaf ears of teenagers. It instead creates more curiosity. The time of using threats to keep people in control is gone! Use facts.