Puberty Advice For Teens: How To Prepare For & Deal With Puberty

You might be menstruating but that’s not the end of your story, not according to your body, anyway. Puberty generally starts two to three years before your period arrives and for some people, the signs of puberty can be noticed from the age of eight upwards. But when do all these changes stop? When are you considered to be grown up?

Here, we take a look at what you can expect over the course of the next few years.

You get taller

Your body continues to lengthen into your late teens. You generally reach your final height by the age of 20.

Your breasts grow

Breast development can take anything from three to 10 years to be complete so don’t be surprised if your boobs continue to grow, becoming rounder and fuller in shape, right into your late teens or early twenties.

Once your first period arrives, your ovaries will start to produce the hormone, progesterone. Progesterone sends a signal to the brain that triggers the milk glands in your breasts to develop. You may not see any change to your breasts whilst this is happening but it’s pretty important for breast development.

You may also be starting to see a change to the nipple and areola as these are often the last parts of your breast to develop.

Your reproductive system develops

Puberty is a time of dramatic change in size, shape and function of all of the reproductive organs. Wondering about that abdominal pain? The sometimes barely-there tummy ache that continues between your periods? That’s your reproductive organs continuing to mature. Here’s what that means:

• The vagina grows in length to reach an average adult length of approximately 9cm (this can vary from 6-12cm from person to person). Remember, your vagina is the muscular passage that leads to your cervix - it is not your external genitalia.
• Your uterus grows very rapidly and its length can increase from 3.5cm to a final adult size of around 7.5 cm long.
• During the initial years of puberty, your hymen will start to stretch naturally. As you enter the later teen years, the hymen can change in texture and become thicker, sometimes with folds of skin being noticed. 
• Your vulva is the external part of your reproductive system and the part you can see. Both during and after your period has arrived, you will notice a change to the shape and colour of your vulva with some girls feeling that their labia have ‘dropped’. But this is not the case, the labia are simply growing and maturing. The size and shape of the labia vary greatly between different bodies.

Our teen range can help you manage your first period.

You get smarter (and sleepier too)

Your brain is pretty busy during your adolescent years too, responding to the increases in both sex and growth hormones. And (yawn), it’s not uncommon for these hormones to change your sleeping pattern, too. You may find you’re not at all tired at bedtime but then overtired in the morning. Don’t be alarmed if you struggle to get up or feel motivated: this is a perfectly normal experience during adolescence. On the plus side, here are some of the things your brain will become much better at in your teenage years. Expect better brain management in:

• Memory
• Problem solving
• Increased vocabulary
• Improved grammatical skills

And what does this mean for you? You may start to see a more mature approach to the way you solve problems. You might also find that you use new or advanced vocabulary to articulate how you’re feeling or to explain an idea, either verbally or in your writing. Hello, new-and-improved you.

Your emotions can be up and down

Sigh. The journey from childhood to adulthood can start and end between the ages of 12-25, which is why you may find the proverbial emotional rollercoaster of your teens continuing into your twenties. This includes the development of sexual attraction to people. If you find that your moods or emotions are out of control and getting to the point where they disrupt your everyday life, chat to your guardian about possibly seeking out professional help from someone who can help you develop healthy coping mechanisms for better emotional wellbeing.