I don’t see this as a problem. When I was raising my sister’s kids the eldest (F) quite often changed brother’s diaper. He is 2.5 years younger. She used wet-wipes and all. If she saw anything suspicious, she would let me, or Grandma, know. Of course we were never far away - supervising from a distance - and saw everything that was happening. She felt useful, brother got a clean diaper. No issue.
I don’t think it’s creepy at all either, but I’m from a family of 6 kids so there’s pretty much nothing in the area of child-rearing that I wasn’t exposed to as a young child.
Cessandra, do you think you would have been as squicked if it had been a baby sister she was changing? Do you yourself have any younger siblings? Just curious. Lots of only children or youngest children just don’t have any experience with the younger sibling dynamic, so things they are unfamiliar with can seem weird.
/possibly humorous slight hijack
So my 7 year old daughter says to me (after witnessing several cases of “collateral” damage from her 7 month old brother’s pee),
“Dad, when I have kids, I’m only going to have girls”.
“Why’s that sweetie?”
“They don’t have Aimers like boys do”
Man oh man do I cherish her innocence.
The only thing I find creepy is that other people find it creepy. How could you possibly read something sexual into changing a child’s diaper? Do you really think a 5 year old could be a pedophile?
/another possibly humorous slight hijack
A former boss relating the first time she changed her newborn daughter’s diaper in front of her then three year old son:
“Mom! She’s nothin’ but butts!”
Cracked me up.
I was barely eight when my brother was born and was almost immediately taught to change diapers. Wet ones, anyway. If I really want to embarass my brother, all I have to do is point out that I’ve seen him naked. :biggrin:
I don’t see anything wrong with this. The big sister gets to feel useful and BE useful. Little brother gets a clean diaper. I’d do the same thing.
Crap, I screwed up a smilie attempt, and it looks STUPID. Never mind.
Opal, it was a dirty diaper. I thought that was implied by him saying he needed a change. Kids don’t usually care if their diaper is just wet, at least not in my experience.
And, yes, I have two younger brothers. I never changed any of their diapers. I also never washed them in the bath. There was never any reason that I would have been touching my brother’s genitals, and that’s what creeps me out.
Everyone has their own familial threshold of such things. I must admit- my kids are 16 months apart, I don’t believe the Man-Cub ever changed or assisted in changing the Fem-Bot. Having said that, I would like to add this.
Chula has bluntly articulated what seems to be the underlying feeling in some of these posts. Not only is it inconcievable to me that any 5 year old would be of a mindset to do anything other than simply clean off Sis and diaper her up, but the idea that one would be skeeved out by the familial assistance of this act is in of itself heartbreaking to me.
This is family, ok? Not a proven and well documented case study of a dysfunctional/dangerous/abusive family, but a baby who needed a change, and her older brother helped her out. Am I supposed to be dragged away in chains because after bathing my daughter, or changing her diaper I used to delight in blowing raspberries against her tummy? Oh god, gasp, horrors of horrors, her belly is INCHES from her privates !!! Just indict me now.
Please. Give me a BREAK. This is BASIC CHILD CARE DELIVERED BY A FAMILY MEMBER. Take a deep breath, stop assuming that every SINGLE act that involves siblings is incest, every SINGLE act that involves a baby and an adult is paedophelia. The world isn’t wound like that and frankly as a father of two kids who recieved HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of baths at my gentle, loving and sometimes amused hand, those of you who are getting your doidies in a twist need to shut down the knee-jerk reflex and take a few deep breaths.
My kids bodies are their bodies, their privacy is sacrosanct. When they were young, I’d actually make an effort NOT to have them naked in public for all to see, I’d try to find a Men’s Room with a Koala Table. But at a friends’ house?
Please. Be real. :rolleyes:
If you chose to not have your children behave as such, I would absolutely respect that decision- they are your kids, it is your family, therefore YOUR prerogative. This was someone else’s family. It’s how they do it. Perhaps you can find a way to accept that, and see it as the simple caregiving that it was?
Cartooniverse
**Cessandra[/] Did you not babysit your younger brothers?
I just cannot fathom what is creepy about caring for family even in intimate situations. (Not sexual, but intimate.)
A few examples to illustrate what I mean:
My friend is due this week with her fifth child. They are a really neat family. The oldest is 11 and she is occasionally left in charge of her younger siblings for short periods of time. (Less than an hour.) She has always been a good helper with her mother and has been taught a little here and a little there and is quite competant and careful about her responsibilities. (I know this because I have zipped over to check on her when her mother once was caught up and unable to get home within the promised hour.) She does do diaper duty if it comes up. How is that different and more creepy than a young girl from outside the family coming in to babysit/diaper?
When my brother was 10 or so he was in a tree retreiving a lost kite for some friends in a school yard. He fell out of the tree and broke both arms into compound fractures. During his hospital stay, he wanted someone family there all the time. When my mom had to work and I didn’t have school, I stayed with him. If he needed to urinate I held the little urine bottle for bedridden males because he felt it too embarrassing to have to ask strange nurses. I looked as little as possible, just enough to make sure we didn’t leak in his bed. We both found this less creepy than asking a stranger. When he broke his back when he was 24. It was the same, all care from helping to shave, wash his hair, eliminate, was more comforting to him to ask me to than other. I’d like to think I was alot more gentle and attentive too, because we are related and I love him deeply. Creepy? No way. It’s part of the normal intimacies of family life, whether that family be a bio family or a modern family with life partners and such.
Uh… so you don’t think wet diapers get changed?? :eek: I changed Dominic’s diaper whenever it was wet. He DID care, plus he would get a rash. I don’t think the OP implied anything other than the diaper was being changed, it didn’t say that the kid asked to be changed or what its contents were.
I asked my mom about this today. She is an attorney who represents children in custody cases, abuse, molestation, and other types of things. She said that she didn’t see anything wrong with it at all. And she’s exposed to not only sick families, but also the laws and viewpoints of a lot of people.
I don’t find the act of changing a diaper creepy, but I would be a bit concerned about the possibility that the parents are making the 5 yo do their dirty work for them. Changing diapers should be solely the responsibility of the parents, or the hired help, and not be foisted upon an innocent sibling.
Put me down as saying it isn’t creepy, but I think it would be a bit difficult for a five year old to properly clean up a three year old with a poopy diaper.
Another in the not-creepy side of the poll. Cartooniverse articulated a fair amount of my blinking “huh?” reaction well, albeit probably a bit too heatedly.
You don’t think that children should help out in the family zuma?
I don’t think that changing a baby’s diaper is creepy. It isn’t “touching her brother’s genitals”. It is changing a baby’s diaper. There is nothing sexual about changing a baby’s diaper.
Cartooniverse has perfectly summed up my own feelings. As has AbbySthrnAccent.
There are intimate bonds between family members, chosen or biological. Note that intimate in no way implies sexual. One of the reasons it’s possible to be so intimate with family members, I think, is precisely because there’s no sexual issue. Come on- you blow a raspberry on your baby’s tummy and it’s a sweet parent/child moment. You blow a raspberry on a complete stranger’s tummy and you’re facing sexual assault charges. There is a huge difference.
As Abby pointed out, there are some situations in which I’d feel much more comfortable with a family member than with a stranger. Despite my parents’ prudishness in raising me, there were times when push came to shove and I had to assume certain responsibilities. One of these was when my father was in the hospital after a severe heart attack. If he had to pee and my mom wasn’t there, I’d help him. Because he did not want to feel so helpless and so exposed in front of strangers. Because I was his daughter, and it was a matter of pride and honor and simple love that I would help him when he needed it. Because no matter how much some people might find it creepy or gross or inappropriate, he was my father, and I would not let him feel abandoned and without dignity among strangers. It was the same for my grandmother when she was dying. I would change her sheets when she lost bowel and bladder control in her sleep, before the nurse got there in the morning. I would clean her up and wipe the drool off her face, because she and I both felt it was better that the people who love her should aid her in her time of need. When I am dying, if I have to linger and lose control of myself, I’ll want a loved one by my side to help me through it, not some faceless stranger.
And let me tell you, there is nothing sexual about holding a plastic bottle in a hospital room helping your father urinate. There is nothing sexual about carrying a weak 80-year-old woman to the bathtub to scrub poop off her back. It is hard, and it is heart-breaking, but it is a responsibility you take on yourself because you love your family. Being part of a family, whether chosen or biological is a huge responsibility. Parents and older siblings care for babies and young ones; when the time comes, siblings care for parents and older ones. Anyone who thinks otherwise is quite frankly impossible for me to understand.
I have been working in the health care field since I was 19, first as a Nurse’s aide, then as an RN since 91. I have seen, cleaned, injected, and bathed untold thousands of bums and not once has there ever been anything remotely sexual about the act. Same goes for helping with urinals, bedpans and inserting or removing catheters, enemas, suppositories and the like.
People have basic human needs that must be accomodated if they are unable to do it for themselves. This applies to all age groups.
That said, my daughter was 5 when her brother was born and she would help change and diaper him on occasion. She welcomed the opportunity cause it made her feel grown up but I think it also reinforced the idea that siblings take care of each other.
I have 6 siblings and from the time we were born we knew that it was our privilege and obligation to help watch after them. If the baby poured a whole bag of flour on the floor, who do you think got in trouble. The baby or the sibling who wasn’t watching them?
Opal, of course wet diapers get changed, but it has been my experience that three year olds only complain about poopy diapers. That’s just my experience.
Yes, I babysat my brothers. But not until I was 12 years old. At that point my youngest sibling was 8, and long out of diapers.
I just want to reiterate something I said in the OP, since it has been brought up, that I don’t think this is something worthy of calling anyone, or even saying anything to the mom. Her kids, her decision. It was just my personal reaction. I still think it’s Ew.
Why would it be “Ew” when the 5 year old sister does it, but not “Ew” when the mother does it? Based on your criteria, it is still someone of another gender wiping the kid’s genitals. I am not being snide, I just can’t imagine it being anything more or less than a kid helping out with the baby, just like feeding it a bottle. I changed my baby sister’s diapers when I was 5, and there was nothing “Ew”, other than the poop. What I find “Ew” is the SUGGESTION that that little girl did something wrong by wiping her baby brother’s bottom.
Cess: the OP said nothing about complaining, though. [and my son did complain about wet diapers at that age, so it isn’t to be assumed]