How am I supposed to tell when I've started puberty?

Hi Mike,

You're in puberty.

Pubic hair is one sign.  The clear stuff is another.  When you first start ejaculating it is usually clear and will become more whitish later on.

You're normal.

Hi Mikerockers

Puberty starts a different ages for everyone, and even once you start may not develop, or have the same areas develop in the same way, or at the same rate as a friend or older brother who started at the same age.  As you are 12 you are about the right age for your hormones to start increasing and start puberty.  You mention you have some pubic hair-I assume you mean down below as this can often be the first place it appears, and yes this is a sign puberty is starting.  Over the next few months you will probably see a few more start to appear, and also under your arms and face, again depending on the individual these can take a bit longer to start than the trouser area.  Your voice may start to crack and drop a few pitches mid sentence, this is your voice beginning to break and probably one of the most obvious signs you are experiencing puberty to others as they wont help but notice.  I can't answer too much about your penis because I don't have one eh

The liquid you are describing sounds like pre cum, which carries the sperm through your tubes on it's way out the penis.  It wont be too long before that happens as I said everything develops at different stages for everyone.  If this is any help below it may give you a rough idea on what to expect and when, bearing in mind this does not happen overnight and takes years.

 

 Age Range 9-12 - average is 10 years of age. Male hormones become active, even if there aren't a lot of outward signs of development.It involves maturing testicles and often a big growth spurt.

 

 Age Range 9-15 - average age is 12-13 years old.

 

The testicles and scrotum begin to enlarge, but the size of the penis doesn't increase a lot. Very little - if any - pubic hair begins to grow at the base of the penis while the body grows taller and changes shape.

 

 Age Range 11-16- average age is 13-14 years old.

 

During this stage, the penis begins to grow longer, but not wider, while the scrotum and testicles grow. Pubic hair darkens and becomes more coarse and begins to spread toward the legs. Hair around the anus may begin to grow. As the boy increases in height, his body and shape begin to look more adult. The voice may begin to crack.

 

 11-17 - average age is 14-15 years old.

 

The penis grows in width and length while the scrotum and testicles continue their growth. Pubic hair grows coarser while underarm and facial hair begins to grow. The skin becomes more oily and a boy may experience his first ejaculation.

 

 Age Range 14-18 - average age is 16 years of age.

 

Now the boy is nearing adult height and body shape. His pubic hair and genitals resemble those of an adult as facial and possibly chest hair grows in. He may begin to have to shave his face.

All the time this is going on your moods and emotions will be changing as you get used to the increased amount of testosterone (male hormone) in your system.  I should also mention as your probably aware boy's tend to get erections whilst they sleep, and even ejaculate due to what's known as a 'wet dream'  It's perfectly normal but quite embarrassing if your mom comes in to change your bed that day.  Don't worry about it, this is part of growing up and she will know this too and be expecting it at some point.

I hope this has helped you

You have already started puberty. Puberty is a process of development. The semen will come later.

Umm, for me its nothing at all lol, and my voice has gotten deeper already, maybe I might need to go to the docter, nvm!

First, a few thing that won't tell you when you are starting. Pubic hair? Actually, you start with dowdy hair, short, thinner, lighter colored hairs that you can't see unless you get a close look. You don't see hair until you've been in puberty for some time. Pumping out sperm or near sperm? Once again, if you see that, you have been puberty for some time. For erections, the opposite answer applies. Most boys have been having erections since about the day they were born. Size? Yes. That's how you tell, but it's not as easy as some may think. You don't go to bed with a 2" weenie and wake up with a 6" penis. Even with puberty running at "full speed ahead", the growth is slow. Your penis looks the same size as it did yesterday, or last week. A month or 2 or 3 ago? Maybe but "I" remember what it looked like in the last few days more than what it looked like months ago. When I hit puberty, my penis probably doubled in size before I noticed it was getting any bigger. I was probably at about 3" before I realized I was in puberty.
Here's what I've thought of since then; Take your hand and lay it across your penis, so you are comparing the length of your penis with the thickness of the 4 fingers of your hand. If you were 2 fingers long when you started this comparison, and now you are 3 or 4 fingers long, you are on your way. (This works best if you started when you were 6 or 8, so you have a good base amount, and you probably weren't thinking about penis size then.)

Just to answer the basic question, there is no way to tell when you've begun puberty, but you will see the signs of puberty once it's been at work on your body for a while.
Even if you are paying the closest of attention to your penis on the day puberty begins, you'll notice no difference in size, shape or color. Your penis won't feel any different neither just hanging there nor when you play with it. Your body is not a machine, so you won't hear a "click" when puberty begins, nor will you hear the "hum" of your puberty pumps, and there is no screen announcing, "Puberty in progress."
Before I get into the changes you will see in your penis during puberty, I'll tell you about a neat little trick your penis has done before beginning puberty, and it involves a few thing you probably haven't noticed or known about. The penis hanging out the front of you isn't much larger than it was very shortly after you were born. Your body grew from 20" long to 60" long, so if your penis grew at the same rate, it would grow from about one and a half inches to about 41/2" inches long, putting it in the small end of the normal man size range. The first reaction is to think it doesn't grow much at all before you begin puberty. But this isn't so. You can only see part of your penis. The inner part of it extends back to your rectum (Your ass, if you don't know the medical terms.). When you were 20" long, this was about 2". When you begin puberty, and you're about 60" tall, that's about 6" of inner penis. Your penis grew more slowly than the rest of your body, but at a rate so that the part you saw always looked to be about the same size, and that's the "neat little trick".
The most desired sign that you are in puberty is the increased size of your penis, but that's not easy to detect because it happens slowly. Steadily but slowly. Even when it's growing its fastest your penis will look no larger tomorrow than it did yesterday, or last week or last month. It will look bigger than it did 3-4 months ago, but your memory of that size has been replaced with your memory of how big or small it looked more recently. My penis probably doubled in length before I knew I was in my puberty growth phase. But there is a way to get around that. Bring your hand down here and compare your penis to different parts of your hand. Your hand has enough different parts so you should find something that is the same length as your penis. During puberty, your penis will grow much faster than your hand. When you say, "My penis used to go from the end of this finger to the 2nd knuckle and now it goes half way to the 3rd knuckle." you'll know you are in puberty. You can also compare the thickness of your penis to the thickness of your fingers. If you have yet to begin puberty, your penis will be no thicker than one of your fingers. Today, my penis id as thick as 2 of my fingers combined.
Later on during puberty, hair will start showing up down there. It comes in 2 phases and it's easy to spot, but by the time you see it, your penis has already done a lot of growing.
When you start ejaculating if you masterbate or have wet dreams, if you don't, that's a sure sign you've begun puberty, but that one shows up even later than the pubic hair.
And there's one more sign of puberty, and it may be the first one you spot because it involves a change of the shape. And it involves the most under-credited member of the team down there, your scrotum. Up until puberty, your scrotum holds your testicles close to your body. Some time during puberty, your scrotum will start stretching on a hot days to do it's second job, temperature regulation. So, if on a hot summer day, you notice that your "balls" are hanging down lower than the end of your penis, it's not because you have big "balls" like some guys proudly proclaim. It's because your scrotum is allowing your testicles to hang far enough away from your body to be cool enough to produce sperm. And if you think you have hairy "balls", you're wrong, you have a hairy scrotum. (About the "big balls" claim - They have gotten bigger just like your penis, but they are hanging that far down, because your scrotum has allowed them to. If you don't believe me, on a low hanging "balls" day, just take a dip in cold water and see how low those "balls" are hanging when you re-emerge.}