Would it be “Ew” if it were a thirteen-year-old sister wiping her brother’s rear end? How about a twenty-year-old sister?
I’m another who is bothered by the fact that there are people bothered by this. I bathed my own brother LAST YEAR. He’s 29, and I’m 26. He was in a bad car accident, had one leg in a cast, one hand was shattered and therefore unusable, he had slipped a disc in his back, and his back and rear end were burnt with road rash. After he left the hospital, he couldn’t bathe himself properly. My sister is a nurse, and she mostly bathed him. When she wasn’t around, I did it. She showed me how to do it gently and properly, and he and I overcame the awkwardness together.
There is nothing sexual about it. He’s my brother; my brother and sister and I are sort of 1/3 of the same person. Washing him was like washing myself.
I also helped my mother bathe a few years back when she had her mastectomy. She was too sore to reach various body parts, so I did it for her.
I really don’t see this as a big issue. My youngest brother is 6 years younger than I am. I used to change his diapers all the time. From the day my parents brought him home. I had watched my mom change him and was supervised the first several times. I’m fairly certain that I did a competent job.
As far as sanitary issues are concerned, I was taught to wash my hands and throw away the mess. Why would teaching that be any different from teaching a child to wash their own hands after using the bathroom?
The sexuality of the situation, in my opinion, is null. I knew he was a boy. I wasn’t “touching his genitals.” I was cleaning him. A five year old who has other notions has bigger issues than diaper changing duty.
The closeness in age shouldn’t really be a concern. I don’t see it as much different than an adult nurse changing another adult’s diaper in a nursing home. And those are two unrelated strangers.
IMHO, if adults didn’t spend so much time projecting their own sexual hang-ups onto their children, their children would have fewer sexual hang-up of their own later on.
Chiming in on both sides, here.
First, speaking as a childhood sexual abuse survivor, a great deal of my positive mental health about bodies came from bathing with my siblings - well past 5 years old, IIRC. I didn’t change diapers much because I didn’t really want to. Mom got that duty, and was welcome to it! So, on that side, I’m definitely in the camp of ‘please do not use your own preferences to force an absolute line on physical closeness including nudity between sibs, lest it cause them more harm than good.’ Without that sense of comfort and safety in my own bathtub (little brother and all), I’d have been really scr*wed for a positive sense of physical self.
On the other hand, your feelings on the matter will probably show no matter what you do, so that will complicate things - they’ll be able to tell you think it is icky, and you’ll be sending two messages. Might be valuable to tell them out loud that YOU think it is time for them to have separate baths, but it is your sense of privacy that does so, and different people have different feelings on the subject, and that’s okay. That way, if your line is substantially lower than theirs, they will know that is okay, and they will know whose concern it is if it ever comes up as a conflict in their own minds. Or just use their own behaviors as a guide? When one of them starts showing privacy-protecting behavior, then perhaps it is time to go to separate baths…
Which brings me to point two. Individuals without any kind of enforced hangups can have different comfort levels for privacy. My younger son is a case in point. He is all of 18 months, and has for MONTHS gestured for me to look the other way when he is pooping. His older brother is 5 1/2, and fascinated by poop. He would love to just look in his brother’s diaper at changing time, but I’ve insisted that it is up to the one who made the poop to decide who gets to look at it (yeah, TMI on parenting, but hey, that’s life with kids). To date, every time the older has asked if he can ‘peek’ it has met with a firm negative head-shake from the younger (he hasn’t asked lately - he knows the answer he’ll get). My younger son simply finds diaper-time too private. He doesn’t mind being changed around other people, he just prefers they not look at him, or check out the contents of his diaper.
This was the kid who kicked the ultrasound wand and fetoscope every time they tried to ‘peek’ at his heartrate, too. I doubt there was any parental pressure to not let anyone look at him in the womb. Or not that I know of. (he turned his back on picture ultrasounds, too. Bad response to pressure/sound focus at him?)
So, if it seemed not ‘ew’ in the sexual sense, but ‘ew’ in the ‘hey, that’s private business’ sense, I can grasp it. Parents have dispensation that goes a bit beyond the sibling level, as far as invasion of privacy goes. I would have no problem having a sibling help me for most things, but for those same things, having a parent do so would be preferable. Not a hangup on the sexual side, but a preference for a particular degree of privacy with particular individuals. I’d adapt pretty fast if need be, and there would be no assumption of sexuality regardless, but I still have a hierarchy of privacy and who is inside which lines.
Basically, though, if the kids do not object, then it isn’t an ‘ew’ factor for me. Each person defines their personal privacy on their own, and we, as parents, enforce respect for those self-determined boundaries. Or at least that’s how it works at our house. Helps the introverts if you keep the extroverts at bay… (oh, and the extrovert is the one who likes his privacy)
But I do recommend being up-front about the difference between your preference and other people’s preference. I’m betting they’ll have friends who do things differently, if not cousins, and it will be a good prep for them to accept different approaches as acceptable if you let them know that your decision is based on your feelings, not some universal law.
I’m 6 and 7 years older than my youngest sibs, and I have cleaned their poopy diapers.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, aside from the disgusting fact that someone is stuck cleaning up shit. But as for any sexual connotations creeping someone out: man, you’ve gotta be very deranged if at any age you’re turned on by a baby’s poopy diaper.
I was pretty advanced sexually, but no way in hell was changing diapers for my baby brother or sister anything but a gross chore.
*Cessandra, plain_jane, Iteki, I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve got a minority view of something that the overwhelming majority of people around the world think is perfectly normal.
Perhaps you missunderstood me Barbarian? It creeped me out that she was creeped out. I was not creeped out by the kid changing sibs nappy, but by somone thinking that was inappropriate.
To me, it’s not creepy that a kid helps out with diapers.
However, the above quote reminded me of my old neighbor. She was, bar none, the laziest mom I have ever met. Her kids would change their siblings diapers because she just “didn’t like to do it”.
IMO, its one thing to help out mom and do grown-up stuff (I remember begging mom to let me do the dishes! :eek:) but it’s another if the kid is acting in mom’s palce. Kids should be kids! They shouldn’t have to clean diapers all the time!
Put me in the not creepy tally.
I must have. Further indications of confusion can be demonstrated by my failure to code properly. 