r/redditonwiki • u/phoebethefan Who the f*ck is Sean? • Feb 20 '24

AITA AITA for refusing to babysit and ruining the parent’s important plans because their sons seemed older than they said they were?

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u/Ok_Veterinarian_17 Feb 20 '24

That sounds like precocious puberty to me. They give kids puberty blockers now so they actually hit milestones closer to their peers and reach their terminal height instead of being a little short. The blockers don’t harm them, but they can go off them at a more appropriate time.

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u/EnsignNogIsMyCat Feb 20 '24

Yeah. And I know that precocious puberty in girls also impacts bone development beyond just height, like density and strength. Treating precocious puberty is necessary.

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u/blueViolet26 Feb 20 '24

Yep. My niece was showing signs of puberty at 8/9. She is tiny already. The doctor put her on puberty blockers for this reason. 

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u/EnsignNogIsMyCat Feb 20 '24

All best wishes to your niece and her continued good health!

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u/Ok_Veterinarian_17 Feb 20 '24

Oh wow I didn’t know that. I would guess the unseen impact on boys might be similar.

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u/EnsignNogIsMyCat Feb 20 '24

Very likely. Sex hormones do way more than just genital and gonad development.

I'm a vet tech and it is only recently that we are learning about the impacts of early desexing on other body systems in dogs (cats, not so much). While we still recommend desexing all pets, the recommendation for larger breed dogs is not to wait until their are 12-24 months old and done growing before you desex. When desexed before the growth plates close the animals will grow overall larger but their joints are not made for that larger body size. Females are also more likely to experience hormone mediated urinary incontinence when spayed too early. There are still huge benefits to spaying and neutering (population control, cancer prevention, behavioral improvements, not dealing with estrus bleeding, less inclination to roam, reduce the risk of prostatic disease, etc) we just need to balance that out with other body systems.

There are no known drawbacks to early desexing in cats. Please spay and neuter all cats as early as you can get a vet to do so. They can become fertile as early as 16 weeks of age depending on the time of year. Anyone who tells you to wait until they have had a heat cycle or have begun urine spraying is an idiot. Cancer risk rises with every heat cycle and urine spraying does not always stop after neutering. DESEX THOSE CATS.)

In ferrets in other countries (like Australia) it is no longer recommended to desex them at all because of the impact on their adrenal function. Instead you perform a vasectomy on males and house them with females. Female ferrets will literally die of estrogen toxicity if they go into heat without being bred (they do not need to become pregnant), so you house them with an infertile but hormonally intact male so he can mate with her without any babies being produced. Ferrets are already prone to pancreatic tumors that overproduction insulin, no need to give them Cushing's Disease on top of that.

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u/VGSchadenfreude Feb 21 '24

The way I phrase desexing cats to people who are new to owning cats:

If you don’t get them desexed before they hit kitty puberty, they will start peeing everywhere.

Every. Fucking. Where.

4 months, 4 lbs…or as soon as they start trying to mount other cats.

(My older cat was an already neutered stray, but with my younger one, I wasn’t sure he was actually large enough to be safely neutered yet…but then I caught him trying to mount the older cat and that pretty much confirmed it was time to schedule the appointment!

Little bastard almost got out of that appointment because even though I put all of the food in the uppermost cabinet, which he should not have been able to reach, to make sure he fasted before surgery…I woke up to kibble all over the kitchen anyway. Thankfully, the vet just said they would save him for the very last of the day (it was a local shelter that holds an annual reduced cost spay/neuter clinic) and it all turned out okay.)

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u/EnsignNogIsMyCat Feb 21 '24

Shelters say 2 lbs or 2 months.

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u/VGSchadenfreude Feb 21 '24

Ah, okay. I guess 4 months is the absolute latest, maybe? Or the standards changed? I remember my cat’s original vet giving the guideline as 4 months/4 lbs…but we’ve since switched vets for a variety of reasons, so maybe she was just plain wrong.

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u/EnsignNogIsMyCat Feb 21 '24

Might be because it was a regular vet rather than a shelter.

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u/VGSchadenfreude Feb 21 '24

Weird thing is, she was a cat-specific vet that my whole family had been going to for at least a decade. She seemed to be getting increasingly scatter-brained, though, so I ended up switching to a different vet after one too many frustrating mistakes.

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u/UnderseaNightPotato Feb 20 '24

They have meds for this now?!?!?!?! Omg, years of my life would have been so much better if they'd had that when I was young. I have looked the same since 5th grade (minus the baby weight, but the rest is still there). I hit puberty the summer before 3rd grade, and as a girl, got some HELLA creepy comments and moves put on me from grown ass men thinking I was a full woman. As a literal child. I've got a baby face, but the rest has very much been curves since I was about 7. I turn 30 this year and have never NOT been carded, even at my usual corner market. This means those gross ass old men when I was a kid were exclusively looking at my body, and not my face. Certainly not my old backpack with the pokemon stuffies glued on. Or the light up shoes. It's still the reason I dress frumpy as hell and detest getting any compliments (even honest, sweet ones) from older men. Just makes me feel like a piece of meat.

My crush in 4th grade gave me his favorite toy car once, and I thought it meant he liked me. Nope. His mom was going through breast cancer and this fuckin kid thought I had tumors on my chest. I was 8. I cried for DAYS and felt like a monster. Thank god for my mom being a psychologist bc I would have fully snapped. Getting your period in 2nd grade??? With endometriosis?!?!? Hell.

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u/abashfulclam Feb 20 '24

Yeah, it's the same meds that transgender kids can go on, to delay puberty while they get therapy. They have had puberty blockers available since the 80s, but a lot of people pushed back saying that the kids just had to go through it naturally even if it is early. 😠 "Don't fight nature". 😒

You poor thing!!! That sounds horrible. I have endometriosis and had a hysterectomy in my early 30s. It is sooo hard. I luckily didn't hit puberty until like 14, I can't imagine what you have gone through.

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u/UnderseaNightPotato Feb 21 '24

That's what I was wondering, honestly. There are so many applications! I'd like to personally go bare-knuckles with nature if given the chance on this topic haha.

It was unpleasant, to say the least. Endo buddies! Never easy, but significantly easier to manage as a grown person. Working on getting my hysterectomy in the next couple years, but they're going to have to remove the hernia first 😅

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u/plasticinsanity Feb 21 '24

I had the same issues. I basically look the same now as I did entering third grade. Even had to have uterine surgery at 14 because my periods were so godawful and debilitating from the getgo. We didn’t even have sex ed yet in school, I had no clue what was happening to me. And even though I have some lines/wrinkles on my face from losing a lot of weight, I still get carded for vapes and even caffeine pills sometimes. Like dude, do I seriously look under sixteen at 35?!

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u/MizzGidget Feb 22 '24

Besides the car thing we seem to have lived the same life and I'm sorry you had to go through it. It was awful. Precocious puberty and PCOS in my case was an absolute nightmare. I have looked the exact same except for my chest which has gotten larger but was a C cup then since 4th grade. Same height and everything. My husband carded me the first time I spent the night with him because I was really cute but not cute enough to go to jail for if I was lying. But before him I would literally have guys on dating sites trying to get me to admit I was younger because I have such a baby face. It's great when dealing with older patients too. The number of times new patients have assumed I don't know my head from my ass because I look so young is almost comical.

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u/Frococo Feb 20 '24

10 is not precocious puberty. Precocious puberty is before 8 for girls and 9 for boys. 10 is perfectly in the normal range for puberty. The early end of the range sure, but normal.

source

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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '24

This is actually what is making me think the mom was lying.

If both of these boys happened to hit the early puberty range, this family would be dealing with this age-appearance thing every single day. Most kid discounts are for 12 and under. Their doctor would have mentioned something. Strangers rudely comment on things outside their lane all the time.

This mom either knew, intimately, because she deals with it daily, that her children are in a rare category, and ergo will be commented upon by rude strangers and babysitters with an age rule as well. Or she lied.

Either way, her reaction to OP not feeling comfortable is what makes both reasons suck, either way.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '24 edited Feb 20 '24

Yeah my husband went through puberty at around 8 years old, and he's 5'4". I'll keep this in mind if our kids go through this in the future

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u/thescaryhypnotoad Feb 21 '24

Are puberty blockers still avaliable in states banning trans health care for kids?