The post that sits at 1.4K on the all-time board of the largest perimenopause community is not about a symptom. It is about a sixteen-year-old boy. His mother had taken him back to the gym, and that night he came to find her:
"BTW, mom, I read an article tonight about how lifting heavy doesn't make women bulky but it can make menopause symptoms worse so just be careful, ok?"
Be still, my heart. He hears me, he sees me.
The post is titled My 16 y/o son just came to me with a peri fact, and it scored 1,188 in our pull with 61 comments. The fact was wrong — the top comment, at 551, says so kindly, and the community's standing advice is that she should be lifting heavy. Nobody in the thread cares. The second comment, at 328:
Haha that was my first thought. "Let's check that reference together, son." But what a well intentioned dude and how AMAZING that he wasn't silenced by stigma.
He got the fact wrong and the thing right. He went and read about it because he had been told what it was called. That is the whole argument of this page.
What do I tell my kids about what is happening to me?
Tell your kids the truth, in short, in their language, with a job attached. The conversation has three parts, the same three the husband conversation uses: what is happening to you, what it is not, and what you would like from them. The third part is the one they keep, because it gives them something to do instead of something to worry about.
It has to be said out loud because nobody said it to you. She almost always works it out herself — from a community, a podcast, a friend or her mother. Rarely from a clinician. If it took you two years and a subreddit to put a name to what was happening, a ten-year-old is not going to work it out from across the kitchen. A child in your house notices everything and explains it to themselves, and the risk is that the explanation they reach is about them.
Why does telling them beat letting them guess?
Telling your kids beats letting them guess because the guess is already made, and the corpus shows what the guesses were. The woman who posted the 978-upvote thread about the older women in her life opens with the explanation she reached as a girl:
Growing up I remember thinking my mom was just an angry, mean B****. Now that I'm in peri, I feel so bad for her if this is what she was dealing it's at the time.
She was a daughter guessing. She guessed mean. It took her own perimenopause to replace the guess with the truth, and under that post are women doing the same arithmetic about their mothers. One, at 24:
My mom was impossible to live with in her late 40s. Now I know why. I told her I get it now.
Nobody in those threads regrets a conversation. They regret the silence, and some of them are working out what their mothers were living through too late to say so. A child who saw the snap did not see what came after it, and the first half of the story on its own reads as I did something wrong. A sixteen-year-old given the word can look it up. A sixteen-year-old given nothing looks it up in their own head.
What do I say to a ten-year-old?
Say three sentences to a ten-year-old, in body language they already understand, and then give them one job. A ten-year-old does not need the word perimenopause, though there is no harm in it. They need to know that you are not ill, that it is not their fault, and that there is something they can do.
Leave out the medical detail and leave out the list. Say plainly that you are not ill, so that question is answered before it is asked, and name the two symptoms that show up in your house, most often tired and cross.
A woman on r/Mommit, in a post that scored 138, writes the version for younger children:
Somehow turned into a yeller. I just SNAP. Sure it's perimenopause and boys are3&5 but it's no excuse. I want to nip it in the bud while I can.
No excuse is the right instinct, and the script keeps it. Explaining it is not the same as being let off.
What do I say to a sixteen-year-old?
Give a sixteen-year-old the real word, an honest account of what it does to you, and two requests by name. A sixteen-year-old can look anything up and will, so the only thing worse than telling them is telling them something they can catch you out on. Give them perimenopause — the years before periods stop — and the plain version of what it is doing to you: broken sleep, a short fuse, words that go missing.
Then say what it is not. It is not about them, it is not an excuse, and hormones is not a word either of you gets to throw at the other mid-argument. The risk with a teenager is that "is it your hormones?" becomes the way to end any argument they are losing. The husband article has the same rule for the same reason.
If the sixteen-year-old is a daughter, there is a second conversation folded inside the first, and the corpus is funny and furious about it. A father on r/daddit, in a post that scored 54:
Perimenopause wife, teen daughter. You do the math.
And a woman on r/TwoXChromosomes, in a comment that scored 14:
It is completely stupid that our species evolved so that women are in perimenopause the same time that their daughters are 15-19 (IYKYK).
Name the collision out loud. Two bodies in one house, changing in opposite directions, both short on sleep. It is faintly absurd, and saying so is the first joke you get to share about it. A daughter also gets one more sentence than a son does, from a comment on I Yelled at My Doctor Today that scored 101:
My daughter will be full prepared with knowledge of what it means to be a woman and how it affects her as she grows up.
That is the sentence your mother probably never said to you. You can be the generation where that stops.
What should I ask my kids to do?
Ask your kids for specific things, by name. Be more understanding produces nothing. These do.
Leaving the room is the plan, not a rejection
It only works agreed in advance. When you say I need ten minutes, they let you go. When they leave, you let them. The rage article gives you the ninety-second rule; this is the same rule with the whole house signed up to it. Said in a calm week, it is a policy. Said for the first time mid-surge, it is a slammed door, and the risk is that a child reads a slammed door as being about them.
One job, named, from a day
Not help more. The bins are yours from Monday. A child with a job in it has a part in what is happening rather than a front-row seat to it.
The joke is allowed
The register the community itself uses for this is deadpan comedy about decline — hand ankles, condensed horse, the tank stable. Let them in on it. It is the cheapest reassurance there is, because it says you are still you.
When is it more than a conversation?
It is more than a conversation, and the right move is to get help now rather than manage alone, in any of these cases:
- A child in the house is frightened of you, or has started managing you — watching your mood before they speak, keeping siblings out of your way.
- Anyone in the house is being hurt, in any way.
- The flat, low mood between the episodes is as bad as the episodes, for you or for the child.
- A teenager's own anxiety has climbed alongside yours.
None of that is a verdict on you. It is the point at which a page about scripts stops being the right tool and a clinician who knows your history is.
What if my kids get it wrong?
Let them. Go back to the boy at the gym: he had the fact backwards, and what he had right was the only part that matters. He knew it was called something, he knew it was happening to his mother, and he thought it was his business to go and find out more.
A comment on the older-women thread, scoring 17:
that's how we got into this mess, by not talking about it. Talking about it is how we get out of it.
Your mother may not have told you. You have the word, and your children are in the next room. Use it once, in daylight, with a job attached, and let them get the fact wrong.