Re: Hezbollah's victory increases chance of war


Grey Mouser West wrote:
Omar Mirza wrote:
<snip>
Ancient Arab girls matured more quckly than modern girls.

You don't *seriously* believe this, do you?

There is authentic evidence for it.

No there isn't.

Yes, there is. You don't know about it because you don't know the
Islamic or Arabic sources. Mind you, that is even true of some
self-styled Westerm experts on Islam, so don't feel bad.

Well are you going to show us or not?

In time.

But before I get into the Arabic evidence, it is worthwhile pointing
out that girls even today are sometimes known to experience puberty at
the age of 9 (in centuries past, people were considered ready for
marriage when they reached puberty. )

Why it is so hard for Rabid Weasel ior you to believe that Aisha, the
wife of the Prophet of Islam(s) reached puberty at this age is
something you will no doubt explain.

Here, for example, is a report from CNN:

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http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/children/03/31/early.puberty.wmd/index.html

(WebMD) -- Like many girls who enter puberty earlier than most, Kathy
Pitts was confused and scared when she got her period at 9. [NOTICE THE
AGE?] "My mother never mentioned the changes that go along with puberty
-- maybe she thought I was too young," says Pitts, now 35 and the
mother of a 9-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter in Bellevue,
Washington. "It would have really helped if my mom had talked to me
about what to expect."

These days, Pitts would have had plenty of company. More young girls
are showing signs of puberty as early as 7 or 8 and beginning to
menstruate two to three years later. As a result, parents are
increasingly faced with the difficult task of talking to young children
about topics that had traditionally been reserved for preteens and
teens.

While previous studies have found that girls typically began showing
signs of puberty at 10 to 11, a new report by the Lawson Wilkins
Pediatric Endocrine Society (LWPES), a nationwide network of physicians
headquartered in Stanford, California, suggests that it is normal for
white girls as young as 7 and black girls as young as 6 to start
developing breasts. This conclusion was based on a study of 17,000
girls between the ages of 3 and 12 conducted by the Pediatric Research
in Office Settings (PROS) network of 1,500 pediatricians nationwide and
published in the April 1997 issue of "Pediatrics."

"This study is significant because it gives us a marker for when
parents should be concerned about physical development that is truly
too early and may be a sign of a hormonal imbalance," says Paul
Boepple, M.D., associate professor of pediatric endocrinology at
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and at Harvard Medical School.
"It also gives parents a heads-up that they need to talk about the
physical and emotional changes of puberty with kids possibly as young
as age 5."


Why is the age of puberty dropping?

Nobody knows for certain why girls are entering puberty earlier, but
the most popular theory involves insecticides, which can break down
into compounds that may have estrogenic activity in young girls, thus
triggering the onset of puberty.

Others attribute the drop to in increase in childhood obesity. "My own
bias is that a major contributor to earlier puberty is the increasing
prevalence of obesity over the past 25 years ... especially in 6- to
11-year-old girls," says Paul Kaplowitz, M.D., associate professor of
pediatrics at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in
Charlottesville, Virginia, and author of the LWPES report. "It has long
been known that overweight girls tend to mature earlier and thin girls
tend to mature later."

As for African-American girls maturing even earlier, Boepple believes
this may be due to a higher cultural tendency toward obesity, while
Kaplowitz hypothesizes that there may be genetic differences within the
African-American population that predispose them to an earlier onset.

If a child is showing early signs of puberty, an evaluation by an
endocrinologist is recommended to rule out other risks. "In a few
cases, early puberty can be indicative of a tumor of the reproductive
organs or that the brain has erroneously triggered the production of
estrogen," says Boepple. "The great majority of girls are just
developing early. But if a girl has unusual symptoms including
headaches, abdominal pain, and weight loss, or if there isn't the
growth spurt associated with puberty, there may be trouble."


Preparing little girls for womanhood

While researchers speculate on reasons for the drop, parents must
contend with broaching the subject of sexual development with children
while they are still in grade school.

According to Helen Egger, M.D., a child psychiatrist in Duke
University's department of psychiatry, once you've noticed signs, it's
important to let your child take the lead. Egger's own daughter started
showing signs of puberty at 8, so she gave her daughter some books
about puberty geared to pre-teens as a catalyst for discussion. Then
she waited for her daughter to approach her with questions.

"Our daughter wanted to talk about some of the topics that the books
brought up, such as menstruation and breast development," Egger says.
"She recognized on her own that her body was changing before her
friends', and that naturally led to discussions about how she felt
about that."

When it comes to talking about sex education with young girls, Egger
suggests that parents proceed with care.

"Even though these girls' bodies are changing, they are still very much
young children and emotionally are probably not ready to talk about
some of things you might talk to, say, an 11-year-old about," she says.
"Start by talking about the physical changes your daughter is going
through, without going into details about having sexual relations. Most
8-year-olds haven't even considered dating, let alone having sex."

One bonus to talking to a child early about puberty is that she is more
likely to be open to a discussion at 8 than she will be at 10.

"When my youngest girl started to enter puberty at 8, we talked a lot
about the changes she was going through -- like getting hair under her
arms and the beginnings of breasts," says Mary Weisnewski, the mother
of two girls, 11 and 16. "But once they reach 10, they clam up and
don't want to talk about these things with their parents -- they'd
rather talk with their friends."

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> There is no good evidence that females reached puberty any earlier
several
centuries ago. Puberty has been consistently in the 11-15 YO range.

Well, Rabid Weasel, let's hear your comments on the CNN article above.

.

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