What to Say When She Asks

You don't need the perfect words. You need something to say when your mind goes blank - and a plan for tonight.

Most of us were handed this subject badly, or not at all. So we rehearse a speech in the car, dread one enormous conversation, and put it off another week - while the child collects her information from a classmate, a screen and an older cousin, and nobody checks it.

This is not a book about periods. It is a book about what to say. It replaces the one big talk with about twenty small ones, none of which has to go well, and it gives you sentences you can say out loud, more or less as written - for the first mention, for the first hour, for the day she rings you from school.

It is written for whoever is holding the job: mothers, fathers doing it alone, stepparents, grandparents, coaches. It assumes you are awkward, and it works anyway.

WHAT IS INSIDE

- How to open the subject without announcing it

- Ready-made scripts for younger children, for older ones, for the child who shuts it down and for the child who asks everything

- What NOT to say - an honest list of the sentences that do damage, each with a replacement

- The first hour after she tells you: what to do, what to skip, and who not to tell

- What to keep in the house, where to put it, and how to make sure she never has to ask

- School, sport, sleepovers, travel, and the other parent's house

- For fathers with no mother in the house: the practical version, start to finish

- Grandparents and relatives who say the wrong thing, and how to correct them without a row

- When to call a doctor, and how to ask so she is actually taken seriously

- What to do when she is not being heard - including when the one not listening is you

- A page you can hand to another adult, and a list of borrowable sentences for when you go blank

PERFECT FOR

- Parents of girls approaching puberty who want to get ahead of it

- Fathers, stepfathers, uncles and grandfathers who were never taught how to talk about this

- Single parents doing it without a second adult in the house

- Separated parents keeping one message across two homes

- Teachers, coaches and family friends who may be the adult in the room

- Anyone who has already said the wrong thing and wants to repair it

This book is general information for adults, not medical advice, and it is written to be used alongside a doctor rather than instead of one.