PALS Helps Moms Tell the Big Secret

“Well, my mother never said a word ,” one mother, dressed kind of fancy, was saying the other night.

Her own daughter is sitting next to her, happy to be here at school with her mom and all her friends. She is a fifth-grader already, can you believe it? Ten years old! Her hair is swept up and she has on earrings, the dress-up kind.

This is not quite a coming-out party, but it is close. And it’s almost revolutionary for those remembering what it was like when they were growing up.

“Oh, yeah, it was real hush-hush,” another mother is saying, leaning forward a bit conspiratorially in that way that women do when they talk about, you know, these things.

Around the room, other mothers are saying the same, and their daughters are listening, rapt. It was always The Big Secret. Isn’t that a scream? It’s also a shame.

Women, of course, have always talked about Womanhood, but with their fifth-grade daughters? That has always been a little more, uh, problematic.

A lot of times, it was just ignored. Girls saw a pretty stupid movie at school--they were all the same--and that was that. Then the girl gossip underground went into overdrive.

But times are changing. And the consensus at Irvine’s Los Naranjos Elementary School, where the atmosphere tonight is part game show, part sleep-over birthday party, is that this change is for the good.

Although . . . can we talk?

Calling it completely wonderful, at this point in the evening, would be taking it too far. Some of the younger members of this group, their mothers report, actually broke down in tears when they first heard the news about what Becoming A Woman, in a technical sense, really means.

Alison: “I don’t want to grow up.”

Becky: “I want to stay little.”

Lauren: “I don’t really look forward to it at all.”

Another picture of innocence just gives an “oh, yuk, do I have to?” kind of look.

Enter Lynora Weaver and Barbi Rouse, The Puberty Ladies, who have experienced these things before. Lynora and Barbi, both mothers of daughters in Irvine and friends of 20 years, created PALS (Parents Actively Listening and Sharing) three years ago.

Today, they travel to 21 elementary schools within the Irvine Unified School District to help host fifth-grade mother-daughter teas, although said beverage is rarely, if ever, served.

Barbi, director of learning skills at Southern California College, and Lynora, an interior designer and former elementary teacher, do this for free. The program has no funding. Local PTAs might donate some money for party favors and door prizes. Mothers bring cookies, cakes, coffee and punch.

The idea here is to break the ice, nothing too scary, nothing too technical, nothing that, presumably, will step on any parent’s toes. S-e-x, for example, is never mentioned at all.

“We want this to be positive, fun and festive,” Lynora says.

“It helps them begin a more grown-up relationship with their mothers,” Barbi adds.

And, if the other night was an indication, it works.

Oh, sure there were the jokes.

Barbi: “I remember, I could not wait to start wearing a bra. I had these visions of what I would look like. Well, let me just tell you, girls, ‘Adjust your expectations.’ ”

And, yes, a movie too. But this one had something really different: The mother in the film, in an impromptu explanation about that time of the month, makes a model of the female reproductive tract in pancake batter. It is an image hard to forget.

“Girls, make sure to ask your mom to make you uterine pancakes on Saturday morning!” Lynora chirps.

So what is going on here? Refreshments, door prizes, a name-that-baby game? It brought smiles, it put mothers and daughters at ease. It sparked conversations about the darndest things.

Mother Setsuko Shelton, for one, is talking about her family’s special red beans and rice, sprinkled with sesame seeds on top.

“I came from a very traditional family in Japan,” she says. “And when my mother makes that dish, everybody knows what that means, my daddy, my brother, everybody. I remember I was embarrassed. I said, ‘Mom, please , don’t make that rice when it is my time!’ But she did. . . . Now, I already told my daughter about it. And she is waiting for that rice.”

Daughter Sarah, meantime, actually agrees. She says she is looking forward to growing up.

And her classmate Kelsy Burns says; “I wish they would do this in sixth grade again. I’m having a great time.”

But, of course, all of this was at the end of the evening. The Puberty Ladies do a pretty hard sell.