Why we built a period education project for kids aged 8 to 12

 

A hundred years of teaching kids about periods (and how we got here) 

‘Interrelate has been teaching young people about things like menstruation since 1926,’ says Kristy Turnbull, Interrelate's Practice Specialist in Relationship and Sexuality Education.

‘The way we’ve done that has changed so much over the years – from books, through to slideshows, through to movies. It’s continued to evolve throughout the 20th century.’

The format has shifted with every decade. The hesitation around it hasn't.

Even today, the way schools handle period education tends to sit in an awkward in-between. Clinical enough to feel embarrassing, optional enough that some kids miss it entirely and timed in a way that often arrives after kids already have questions. Or worse, after they’ve started menstruating without knowing what to expect.

We asked ourselves: are there ways we can engage better with how kids are learning today?

 

What kids told us about period education 

Before we built anything, we ran a series of national Think Tank sessions with experts, teachers and primary school students. The findings were sobering but not surprising:

• 42% of students reported feeling embarrassed during period education 
• Misinformation and stigma still shape how young people understand menstruation 
• Boys are often excluded from meaningful learning about periods 
• Many kids feel anxious about what's ‘normal’ – but don't know who to ask 

‘We heard everything from “it's embarrassing and gross” to genuine anxiety about pain and what to expect,’ Kristy says. ‘We realised we needed to go beyond just facts. We needed to build confidence, empathy and real understanding.’

That insight became the brief for Cringe Quest – our period education game for the next generation of kids.

We considered creating an educational video about menstruation but quickly realised a period education video game would be more appealing to Generation Alpha and beyond.

 

Why we made a period education video game (not another worksheet) 

The kids we spoke to aren’t learning the way previous generations learned. They're growing up with YouTube tutorials, interactive apps, and games that teach them everything from times tables to a second language. A printed handout can’t compete – and a one-off, awkward lesson at the front of a classroom doesn't either. A period education video opens up a different mode of learning. One where kids can:

• Make choices in private, without the pressure of peers watching 
• See the consequence of a response before they’re in the moment for real 
• Hear period-positive language modelled instead of awkwardly delivered 
• Repeat what they want to repeat, at their own pace 
• Ask questions without feeling judged for asking them 

It’s still education. It just doesn't feel like a lesson – it feels like a conversation kids can have on their own terms.

An educational video game about menstruation that includes everyone 

The other thing we held firm on: this had to work for boys, too.

Excluding boys from period education has been the default for a century, and it's part of why stigma persists. When half a classroom is sent out of the room while the other half learns about menstruation, the message kids absorb isn't ‘this is private’ – it’s ‘this is shameful, and not your business.’

Cringe Quest is built as an educational video game about menstruation for everyone in the class. Girls, boys, kids who aren’t sure where they fit. The point isn’t that every kid will menstruate. The point is that they will all know someone who does – a sister, a friend, a classmate, a future partner – and they all deserve the language and confidence to understand it and communicate about it. 

 

Built on 100 years of teaching, made for how kids learn today 

Cringe Quest now complements our broader school and community-based education programs and the other relationship and sexuality education resources we offer.

OurManaging Menstruation program is a coveted 90-minute in-school session for Grade 3 to 6 students, giving girls the chance to learn in a guided, supported space with an experienced educator in the room.

Our equally popular Moving Into the Teen Years (MITTY) education program for Year 5 and Year 6 covers the broader relationship and sexuality education kids need as they head towards adolescence. And Tricky Talks brings parents and kids together to navigate the conversations that come with growing up.

For the questions that don't always come up in class – or the ones kids think of later, at home, on the way to school, halfway through dinner – our books,100+ Questions Kids Have About Puberty and 500+ Questions Kids Have About Sexuality collect the real questions Australian kids have asked our educators over the decades, with age-appropriate answers families can read together.

Cringe Quest extends all of that work in two important ways:

1. It reaches families and kids who don't have an Interrelate program at their school.
2. It gives every kid a way to revisit the content as many times as they need, in their own time, in their own way.

‘Over the last 100 years, the world has changed significantly,’ Kristy says. ‘To keep trying, experimenting and playing within this space is super important. We've been providing this kind of education for 100 years, and now we’re able to provide access to this kind of education to infinitely more people. That's a really exciting time to live in.’

 

Play Cringe Quest: a free period education video game for the next generation

Cringe Quest is live now, and it’s free for any family, teacher or school that wants to use it. It takes 30 to 60 minutes to play through, works best on a larger screen, and needs no sign-up.

If you want to see what a period education project built for how kids actually learn today looks like, play Cringe Quest now.

It's free. It's fun. And 100 years in, it’s the period education we wish we’d all had.