The Piper Cub has a friend in the neighborhood who he plays with regularly. We have an informal understanding with her parents that she can come over to our place to play, and the Cub can go over to play in their backyard.
A while ago the little friend came over. She and the Cub (both 4 years old) were having a great time. I was doing dishes and looked out the window. “Hmmm” I thought, “she’s wearing a dress today.” Then I looked again and said to Mrs Piper, “Is she just wearing a t- shirt? And nothing else down below?” Mrs Piper looked and said “Yup”.
So we have a semi-nude 4 year old running around in our backyard, who isn’t ours.
Ultimately, we put a pair of the Cub’s shorts on her, and when I took her back next door explained that she had come over semi-nude. Her parents seemed to have a “oh, she shouldn’t have done that” attitude, and her mom seemed to blame her dad for it.
It struck Mrs Piper and me as very odd. At four years old, shouldn’t a kid be aware of the need to be dressed? And we also found her parents’ :shrug: a bi disconcerting. Shouldn’t they be a bit concerned that their little girl is running around the neighbourhood with her girly bits exposed?
My son is two and he has started taking off his diaper, the neighbor’s boy is three and always running around naked. We often have two kids in here is various forsm of nude.
Four is old enough that the kids can be taught they need to wear something, but it doesn’t require anything “moral.” My daughter (will be four soon) understands a lot from daycare that she needs to do this or that.
If the neighbor’s not that upset, I wouldn’t particularly worry about it. Now if she’s nine and still letting her girl parts go free, you’ve got a separate issue.
At this age, I’d just be sending her home with a “you can come back when you’re dressed” in casual tone and not make a big deal about it. But yes, I think at 4 yrs old, almost ready for kindergarten, kids should know that it’s “proper” to be dressed in public, in the same way it’s proper to say thank you when someone gives you something.
I’m remembering scolding my nephew for asking strangers outside his apartment if they had seen a missing cat while only wearing a shirt and masturbating, one dude looked hilariously uncomfortable. He was three at the time lol.
It depends a lot on local mores, but four is probably about the oldest you (generic you :))could get away with this. I wouldn’t be particularly surprised that the kid herself isn’t very invested in hiding her private parts - IME personal modesty seems to kick in around 6 or 7. One of the local schools still has their youngest kids changing for swimming lessons out in the open by the side of the public pool (the kids look about 6) which is a wee bit over the edge for me. But on the other hand, every preschool I know has open plan kids toilets, so it’s not like we’re training the littlies to keep their private bits private.
I think public nudity in a 4yo is a bit like public nose-picking - certainly tell 'em not to, but don’t expect the message is going to sink in juuuuust yet!
I’d probably (heck, not probably, but actually…I’ve had this conversation many, many times!) say something like, “Amanda, we’d love to have you come over and play when you’re dressed, honey. But you need to put some shorts on.”
Address the problem (you’re uncomfortable with bare butts in your yard - totally normal and appropriate) without shaming, but still transmitting culturally appropriate values.
And I don’t think it’s terribly unusual or worrisome at 4, especially if she’s just 4 or an emotionally young 4, or if they’re relaxed about nudity in her home. If anything, I’d take it as a compliment that she was so comfortable at my place that she’d mentally filed it as “home” and internalized home rules instead of going out rules for my place.
What I find disconcerting is the attitude that nudity in a 4-year-old, in a home environment, is somehow sexual or deviant. If she’s comfortable like that and the weather’s right, I say more power to her.
Sure, and most open minded dudes would agree. But all it would take is one puritanical moron calling the Police or CPS, and then there’d be a issue. Likely work out Ok, but still…
My kid is three so I don’t know how different four-year-olds are, but it doesn’t strike me as weird at all. Little kids tend to like being half-naked. Nothing strange there.
Like WhyNot said, it sounds like the kid has your home mentally misfiled under ‘home territory’. Our Widget knows that outside of home you need to wear knickers, but she’ll still run around her grandmother’s house in just a T-shirt, because that’s ‘home’ in her head.
If you don’t want the kid bare-arsed in your garden, you just need to re-draw the boundary line. ‘Hey, there’s nothing on your bottom half! Do you want to run home and grab some shorts, or do you want to borrow a pair of the Cub’s?’ should make it clear that this is a no-bare-arses zone.
One of my favorite things about little kids is their complete lack of body issues. I helped out with swim lessons at my kids’ school when most of them were 5 and half of them were already embarrassed/ashamed by their own nudity. I just find that sad.
I love that my kids still love to run naked through the sprinkler.
I get that this isn’t the world we live in, but I think undeveloped sexual organs should be no big deal. We all have them and when you’re little, sexual thoughts don’t enter your mind.
No there wouldn’t be an issue, apart from the puritanical moron being exposed as a moron. At least in my neck of the woods.
If you can’t run around the garden with no pants on when you’re four, then when can you? Make the most of it, I say, because you’ll be in one uniform or another for the rest of your life.
I’m going to vote “no big deal” … it sounds like one of those stages where the parents should be enforcing the message “we wear clothes, clothes on the top and clothes on the bottom, when we have guests or when we play outside” but it might take a bit of repeating with the understanding that there will be plenty of relapses.
I think it’s similar to something like “we wear shoes when we play outside” where you would be expecting a bunch of times when the kid gets too distracted or excited to put on shoes, so you keep repeating it without freaking out so that eventually putting on shoes is a habit.
I’m pretty sceptical the police or CPS would care about a naked four year old. Lots of kids that age go through a “nudist” period where its hard to get them to wear clothes (one of my siblings used to “hide” his clothes so he wouldn’t have to wear them and run around the neighbourhood nude, to my parents embarrassment), and its not particularly unusual to see them running around, especially in the summer.
If it makes the OP uncomfortable, I don’t think there’s any problem with telling the kid to go home and get some pants. But beyond the OP’s discomfort (and I guess, possible embarrassment of the parents) I don’t think there’s any problem with letting the kid do what he wants.
So far, I’ve never encountered an adult who was just hanging out without pants because they never learned that going out without clothes was inappropriate when they were kids. I seriously doubt the child in question will have that problem either, whether the OP corrects her or not.
This. It’s time for them to learn, but still the age where they’ll do what they want anyway and see what they can get away with. Would NOT blame the parents, lol.
Tell the child to go home and put clothes on, end of story.
This was the correct response, and what I would have done. You can’t just let her cavort on your property without pants, so providing them, and explaining the situation to the parents was perfect.