PARENTS NEED TO HAVE THE TOUGH TALKS

As parents, we can’t leave certain responsibilities – and conversations – to teachers and other people out there.

We need to open up and start talking to our teenage girls about menstruation.

Our children are all alone, yet their parents are alive. They have no one to talk to, not just about school, but about everything in general. They specifically need to have real conversations about the changes they’re going through, emotionally and physically.

Many teenage girls still don’t know how to handle their periods.

In this day and age, menstruation is taken as a dirty little secret that should be hidden.

Every time a girl sees a stain on her sheet or underwear, she becomes ashamed. Carrying or even going to buy sanitary pads is still a shameful thing to them.

What should be shameful is actually the ignorance of parents (both mothers and fathers).

Why are we not empowering our daughters with knowledge and making them understand that periods are a sign of good health? They mean life.

It is time that we as parents open up to our children. We need to ask about their challenges around periods. Is she having cramps, mood swings, headaches? As a parent do you even know? Do you care?

Let’s help our daughters learn to love their bodies and take pride in the bleeding, because they are bleeding for life. Body shaming comes in many shapes and intersects with every social system and injustice you can think of. MARIA MAKALA, HEILBRON, FREE STATE