Welcome to the New Stage
What is Puberty?Puberty is the time when your child moves through a series of significant, natural and healthy changes. These physical, psychological and emotional changes signal your child is moving from childhood to adolescence.
Puberty starts when changes in your child’s brain cause sex hormones to start being released in the ovaries (girls) and testes (boys). The timing of puberty and its stages is different for every young person, but includes:
There’s no way of knowing exactly when your child will start puberty. Early changes in your child’s brain and hormone levels can’t be seen from the outside, so it’s easy to think that puberty hasn’t started. Puberty can be completed in about 18 months, or it can take up to five years. This variation is also completely normal. Many people think that adolescence is always a difficult time, and that all teenagers have moods and behave in challenging ways. In fact, some studies show that only about 5-15% of teenagers go through extreme emotional turmoil, become rebellious or have major conflicts with their parents during puberty. |