It is not likely that children ten to fifteen years old would care to read an article like this, if they do fine but for the most part they will be busy with school, with home chores, and with play.
It falls to parent therefore to acquaint them with this transition period. In order to help their children through it; they need to be constantly ready to make a helpful remark, to give needed assurance, and to provide answers to delicate questions. Perhaps the most striking of a threshold period is the child rapid growth. Within a few months a youngster will shoot up several inches in height. The feminine characteristics of young womanhood become apparent.
The capacity to grow constitutes one of the greatest gifts God has bestowed upon His creatures. Growth is vital to human existence. The infant must grow in order to become a child. The child must grow in order to become a youth, and the youth continues to grow until becomes an adult.
Success in life depends not only on physical growth. In order to live abundantly a person must also grow intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Physical growth is usually completed before age of twenty. Intellectual, emotional, and spiritual should continue, however, throughout life.
Girls usually reach their growth spurt when they are between nine and thirteen. During this period a girl becomes a young woman. By the end of the growth spurt, she becomes just about as tall as she will ever be.
A girl in the threshold period has reason to be happy when she is no longer a child. However, if she is not informed on the changes that take place within her body, she may become worried and anxious over what these changes means. It is in this situation a kindly and sympathetic mother can be of great help to her daughter. As the mother explains the events that take place in a girl's body her daughter will feel reassured that she is normal and will develop a poise and self-confidence that will even improve her personality.
During childhood, a girl's body contains certain organs different from those of a boy. Those are the organ that will enable her later, to become a mother. During childhood they do not function simply presenting a miniature, they await the time when womanhood arrives.
Chief among the organs in a girl's body which brings about the changes of this threshold are the ovaries. There are two of these, one on the top right and one on the left, in the lower part of the abdomen. The ovaries perform two duties. First they produce a chemical substance, estrogen, which circulate throughout the body and influence the various tissues to follow the feminine pattern of development. Becoming active for the first time during the threshold period, the ovaries are responsible for stimulating rapid increase in height, for bringing about a broadening of the hips, for stimulating the development of the breasts, for prompting the growth of hair under the arms and in the pubic area, and for causing a maturing of the uterus (womb). The second function of the ovaries is to produce the female sex cells, called ova. The purpose of the cell is to help in producing a new life to furnish a tiny bit of material that assist in forming a baby. But a baby has two parents-a mother and a father.
The creator therefore planned the life of human beings in such a way that a baby comes into being only when a female sex cell, produced by one of the mother's ovaries is joined by a male sex cell, produced by the baby father. When the union of these two sex cells occurs within a woman body, a new life is started and the woman is said to be pregnant. The mother should be able to educate the girl child being wise enough not to tell the whole story at one sitting. She should tell her daughter little at a time.
Educating the girl child therefore, on the primary basis of her developmental process into entering adulthood is simply unavoidable; this certainly will go a long way in making the mind of the growing girl child be at peace.
