Nipples can have a mind of their own and suddenly become hard and even more obvious when you are cold, excited or anxious. It can be kind of embarrassing to some girls, but try not to worry too much about it. Just like everyone gets goose bumps when they are cold or nervous, your nipples can act like those goose bumps, too. Have you ever heard them called headlights? Party hats? It happens to all girls! Some girls like to wear bras to help with this occasional pop-up. Other reasons to wear a bra include comfort and general breast health. Bras may decrease the color and size of stretch marks and may help prevent back pains.
When should you start wearing a bra? Well, if you aren’t already, it’s up to you! Some women never wear a bra, and some don’t go anywhere without one. Lots of girls start wearing a bra when their breasts show through their clothes or start to jiggle a little. When your breasts are growing, it’s normal for them to be a little sore or sensitive. Sometimes wearing a bra can be more comfortable.
Your breasts will grow quickly before you start your period and then a little more after you start. During this growth phase, they may take on a shape that you don’t like. Be patient, your breasts may continue to change shape and size up to about age 18. Because of this rapid growth, you may need to buy bras more often, because a properly fitted bra is important, especially when your breasts are growing. Bras can help prevent some stretch marks, but sometimes, no matter how much support you have for your breasts, those stretch marks happen anyway. It’s genetic. You can thank your ancestors! Don’t forget to buy a special sports bra for more physical activity. Finally, a bra will not prevent your breasts from becoming saggy later in life. That usually happens to some extent as we get older and is most noticeable after we have babies.
Breasts are another important part of your girlness for several reasons. They are sensitive when touched and can give us sexual pleasure (we’ll talk about that more in chapter 8), but most importantly, breasts are for feeding babies. There is no food or formula that anyone can buy that is better for a baby than breast milk. And you know what? Your breast size has nothing to do with how much milk you can make. Even the smallest, pea-sized breasts can make enough milk to feed a big, hungry, chubby baby! Although most women can breast-feed, some decide not to for various personal or health reasons.
The Rest of Your Body
In case you haven’t noticed, your body will grow a lot in middle school. It grows up some and out some, up some more, out some more. In the year before you start your period, you may grow three to four inches taller or more! After your period starts, you can still grow a little, but it is mostly in your trunk. Your legs, arms, feet, hands and head are all done by then!
Now what about that growing “out” part? Most girls complain about that part, but it is a part of getting that womanlike body.
Take care of this new body you are growing. It has to serve you for a long, long, long, long time. Some of these changes are hard to accept, but remember that being a girl is a gift, and this new body is part of it!!!!!
Since We’re Talking about Girls,
We Gotta Talk about BRAINS!!
Finally, we can’t leave out the most important part of your entire body . . . your brain! Your body’s girl parts are not the only part of you getting a makeover once you start puberty. Inside that head of yours, there’s a major construction zone! Your brain hasn’t been this busy growing since you were a toddler! Can you feel all the electricity, the power, the buzzing and whirling that’s happening in there? Thoughts, emotions, feelings, knowledge are all inside that head of yours. It is a busy place!
Believe it or not, your brain is largest around age eleven or twelve (and if you have a 12-year-old brother or sister, we’re sure you’ll have a hard time believing us!). But for brains, size doesn’t matter much—it’s the wiring that matters the most!
After age eleven or twelve, your brain starts to “delete” some of its unused parts and begin construction on some of the more grownup parts. It takes a lot of time, and what you do, think and feel helps decide what parts to delete. It’s kind of like deleting old files on your computer. Your brain is your computer, and if you leave some “files” unused for a long time, it starts to clean up and put away that old and outdated stuff.
At the same time it’s cleaning out old files, your brain is also figuring out how to do more complicated jobs. Scientists have given these jobs big words like “advanced reasoning,” “abstract thinking” and “meta-cognition.” (You can impress any adult with those words!) What that means is that your brain is becoming more and more able to think about things that you can’t really see, like beliefs, trust and love. You become able to understand what it means to have choices and consequences. And your brain gets smarter every day!
You can also think about “thinking.” That sounds weird, but when you were a little kid, you couldn’t sit down and think about your own thoughts, analyze your feelings or think about how things affected you. Now you are beginning to do just that.
That’s why friendships are meaning more to you—you understand the feelings and emotional part of friends. Friends are not just someone to “play” with anymore. They are people who
These changes in your brain are also giving you some thoughts, ideas and emotions that are very common among teenagers. You may feel like you have people watching you sometimes, even though you know you really don’t, like an imaginary audience. We don’t mean you are crazy, hearing voices or feeling paranoid; you just feel like you are performing for others sometimes. It’s okay. That’s helping you monitor your behaviors and think about how you act or want to act. Sometimes it’s good to “pretend” your parent or best friend is watching. It might keep you from doing something you really don’t mean to do or shouldn’t do.
You may also have the [wrong] idea that bad things only happen to other people and that you are invincible (that’s a good vocabulary word—it means “it won’t happen to me,” “I can’t be beat or hurt”). Think about, for example, getting seriously hurt on your bike. Most adolescents think, “I don’t need to wear a goofy helmet because I’ll never fall and hurt my head.” But every year, hundreds of adolescents are killed or suffer permanent brain damage from falling off their bikes and hitting their heads. And what about pregnancy? Many teens have the idea that “it won’t happen to me,” so having sex without birth control is no big deal. That kind of thinking is why almost a MILLION teenage girls get pregnant
On a happier note, you also start understanding justice and fairness better. You start to understand why rules you may not like can still be important. You also begin to realize that the world is a big place,
