One of our girls has suffered headaches as long as I’ve known her, and since she started her period, has complained monthly about difficulties and yet she will play through danged near any sports related injury. Her sister has never had the headaches or the menstrual issues yet is constantly hurt, real or imagined, as a result of her sports related activities. Once again, so different! The girl with the headaches tried and tried to talk both her Mother and her Father into taking her to the doctor to address her monthly issues. Finally after much drama and a do and many many months of complaining, she was able to convince her Mother to take her. The girls’ Mother has always considered their health to be her domain, though certainly a shared expense. Oh sorry, sarcasm. So we were glad she had finally decided to make a move. Now as girls do, ours had talked to her friends and was told by some that the pill would make her periods more regular and probably more tolerable. When asked that question one day before her medical appointment, I chose my words carefully. I said, that everyone’s different of course, but my experience had been that yes, the hormone boost did help me in that department. I said she should talk to her doctor together with her Mother to see what options she had to alleviate her discomfort. After the appointment, our daughter came back to our house all upset. She told me that the doctor had agreed she should try a low dose pill, provided her a sample, wrote a prescription and sent her on her way. Once in the car, she said her Mother made some comment about her just wanting to be free to be sexually active, threw the pill pack away and tore up the script. Oh boy…. Granted that our daughter’s interest in boys was escalating, as happens, and one might suspect an ulterior motive for wanting to get on the pill, but be that as it may, this got us no closer to resolution of her monthly problems. Great. Every month this kid is miserable and so are we all! During this time, this particular daughter was living full time with us (another story). So she appeals to her Father. My husband was raised with three sisters and isn’t in the least bit uncomfortable discussing female issues, which I think a bit different for sure, but the girls have always just been an open book when it comes to this stuff with their Father so oh well. Of course a series of not so good conversations happens between Mother and Dad, then Dad makes a return appointment to the doctor. That day comes, they keep the appointment and Dad gets her prescription filled. Now we have our other daughter, who has always always demanded equal treatment, asking her Dad to make her an appointment so that she too can get on the pill. In hearing this, I off handedly inquired why she felt the need to get on the pill. She began to spin a yarn of intolerable monthly pain. This particular daughter has difficulty with misrepresentation of fact on a regular basis it seems. I couldn’t help but point out that I’d maybe once heard her say she had cramps. She responded by saying obviously her pain tolerance was higher than her sisters. Hmm, that’s not been my observation for any other sort of pain or injury. Not being able to help myself I said something like are you sure it isn’t just that you can’t stand it that your sister has been given something you haven’t? Of course not, proposterous, it had absolutely nothing to do with that! On the other side of the equation, you have pill girl leaving her case everywhere imaginable, almost like a badge, a credential, something she now had that her sister didn’t. Though she certainly denied that was what she was doing. Little women sometimes don’t realize that it isn’t often they can fool older women. I caught an exchange one morning in the hall, where pill girl waved her packet in the air in passing her sister exclaiming that gee she couldnt remember if she’d taken it that day or not. I saw what she was doing and I called her on it. In discussing all this with my husband, we both had the same fear. Between the two daughters it was the one not on the pill we felt to be more at risk for making a bad decision to do something with a boy before she was really ready. She suffers from a real pleaser mentality and it causes her, I’m afraid, to do things she knows better than to do. We also agreed that for a totally different reason. this might be exactly the girl we ought to help get onto the pill, but we hated the reason we felt that way. After several failed attempts at convincing her Mother and Father and me of her equally horrific monthly discomfort she finally gave it up, at least for the time being. The pill did make better our one daughter’s monthly physical discomfort, though it has lead us to a new and associated list of things to worry about. As my husband told her Mother though, whether or not these girls take the pill really has no bearing on whether or not they will become active with boys and when. Withholding treatment from a person who might medically benefit out of your fear as a parent is an understandable yet not sensible decision. Our other daughter has been caught meeting up with boys when she claimed to be doing something else. We do worry and know that it’s only a matter of time before we probably ought to go on ahead and get her lined out on oral contraceptives as well. Oy!
Things learned:
- There’s nothing wrong with doing what you need to do to help your children medically. Sometimes you just have to put aside your fears and insecurities and do what you know is best for them.
- When your kids are being hateful and/or ridiculous, call them out on it. Once in a while they just need a reminder that we aren’t stupid.
- Your kids’ decision to become sexually active is a product of social pressures, their own feelings both emotional and physical and a whole lot of things, in the end you can only hope you have taught them to have enough self respect that they will make good decisions when it comes to this sort of thing.
- The beauty of raising a baby in the midst of all this teenage female hormonal upheaval is….on more than one occasion our girls have said, that they love their baby brother dearly but they see how much work he is and they know they are nowhere near ready for that level of responsibility. And our little guy, while all boy, wasn’t a difficult baby…which we remind his sisters of evey time we get a chance. Field research for them, is paying off here I think!
Good StepMom
