Heh, you mean we shouldn’t teach our kids they pee out of their taco?
I just wish there were an easier word than urethra. So many women I hear teaching their kids they pee from their vagina - that’d have to be a hell of a tear.
(because the difference we see between boys and girls is penis and vagina; the penis is dual purpose though the the vagina is not.)
Jesus Christ! :rolleyes: Using tali-whacker and hoo-hoo instead of textbook terminology isn’t going to ruin some kid. It’s pretty SOP. What next, having a little kid use “I need to have a bowel movement” instead of “I need to poop.” It sure seems like some folks need to have and demonstrate some sort of odd sense of false sophiscation in how they raise their kids.
When I worked in retail pharmacy, I had a woman come up that refused to speak to the male pharmacist on staff and would ONLY talk to me, no ifs ands or buts. As a tech, I wasn’t allowed to offer advice, but I figured I could hear what her issue was then tell her I had to “look something up” and relay it to the pharmacist. So anyway, I go out to talk to her and she tells me that she used some new clothes soap on her “dainties” and now she has a terrible itch all over her…
…
…TEAPOT.
Her teapot. This is an adult woman speaking to another woman. I was like “Your WHAT? Your TEAPOT?? Do you mean your vulva?” and she was like “Um, I guess so!” as if she didn’t even know the term. Very scary.
Of course, now that’s what I always call it. 
You realize that you’ve now made it impossible for me to hear the song “I’m a Little Teapot” without dissolving into giggles, right? 
It’s obvious where the spout is, but the concept of a handle is slightly disturbing, to say nothing of “hear me shout.”
I wish you could have seen me trying to repeat the conversation to the pharmacist with a straight face. Techs aren’t allowed to give out any health information whatsoever by law- not even confirm that “yes, some people do take Tylenol for headaches”. Nada. So I had to repeat it to him verbatim and let him make the judgement of what part exactly was itching from her poorly laundered “dainties”.
My teapot is killing me!!
And let’s just pass by the last line as quickly as we can, shall we?
Regarding the the folks in the OP, I know some folks like that, so I am extrapolating here, based on personal experience. It seems to me that they are the type of people who make parenting decisions based on what other people think, not on what is best for the kid. These people, I want to smack. Very hard.
I got taught penis, vulva, vagina, bottom or bum, wee and poo. Never did me any harm.
It surprises me how often get blank looks when I ask patients when exactly they last moved their bowels. I then have to go down the list of euphemisms.
“When did you last go to the toilet/do a number two/have a poo?”
The converse was when the doctor once asked me something about “…your feces, you know, your ca-ca…” I was 22. Yes, I knew the word feces, thank you.
My mom being a doctor, my parents mostly used the word penis, although my dad did say “dinky” once or twice. I never used it, not even when I was five. (I have a vivid memory of making up the “penis and bum song.” Don’t ask.)
I have to. Not “Penis and Anus”, or “Penis and Buttocks”?
There are probably more words that rhyme with “bum” than there are that rhyme with either “anus” or “buttocks”. ( not to mention “rectum”. )
My kids are teenagers now. We have never talked baby talk to them on any level, about any topic. The idea has always bothered me. One speaks to children in simple concepts, using age-appropriate words. As they grow, you alter the vocabularly. When a child is 2, they learn to say they bumped their head because they may not have the ability to handle " I bruise my left temple on the bike handlebars when I fell off, Dad ".
However, body parts are body parts. My daughter has a vulva, that’s what she calls it. My son has a penis, that’s what he calls it.
Cartooniverse
I’ve always felt that this word wasn’t so much female anatomy than some kind of monster that goes against Godzilla.
In contusion:
I’m a Little Teapot short and stout
Here is my handle…here is my spout.
When I get all steamed up…here me shout!
Then there is a wet spot all about!
/that is so wrong on so many levels.
//I like it!
Besides the question of the propriety of using words like penis, anus, vulva and vagina with young children (after all, one person’s propriety is another person’s impropriety, so yuo can’t make a strong argument here even if you can make a good one), there is the matter of what we are teaching very young children if we restrict our teaching of adult words to one area, such as body parts. Of course, we need to remember that because we may be in a minority of people who do this of those around whom the children are growing up (i.e. many of the kids in their class may be using willy, little sister, down there, etc), the child is likely at some point to wonder (at least internally) what significance the difference in approach and upbringing might have.
If, as I suspect might be the case for some (though perhaps not people here), we limit the use of adult words to this area, but use euphemisms for other areas such as death (pass away, pass over, sleeping etc rather than die or killed) and divorce (not happy, still friends, decided to live apart rather than (s)he was having sex with another man/woman - where this was the case), then the effect on the child could actually be the opposite of what is intended. Rather than growing up to think that their body is natural, normal, fun and no cause for any shame, the child might grow up thinking it’s not normal, not fun.
For this reason, as much as for any other (e.g. propriety - what I consider proper for a child), we choose to use the fun words.
Well, sure. But I think the reasonable thought (and one which can easily be coached by the parent) is “Huh. Wonder why Sally doesn’t know the right word for penis? Only babies call it a ‘wee-wee’!”
I always felt rather embarrassed for and superior to kids who used “baby talk” in any sense, as I think most school age children do. Kids don’t want to be thought of as babies - they want to use grown-up words. They want to use them so badly that we must carefully coach them about swearwords and vulgarities that are likely to get them in trouble. We taught our son that there are “grown-up words” (swears) just like “grown-up drinks” and “grown-up movies”; when he was older, he could decide whether or not to use them, drink them, see them, but until then, he was to stick to shoot, darn, fruit juice and Disney.
huh? I bolded what I’m parsing as the meat of your sentence, and I don’t understand how the “then” follows from the “if”. I don’t see what body part names have to do with euphamisms for death, or how using correct terminology for some things but not others means negative feeling are likely.
It sounds like you’re saying if we lie to our children in some areas (death and divorce) we should lie to them in all areas? I suggest that it makes more sense not to lie to them in any areas, but to tell them the truth - although that truth should be in terms they can understand. There is nothing more complex or scary about the word “penis” than “wee-wee”. There is something scarier and more complex in “your mother was having sex with another man outside our arrangement of marriage and I hate her for it” than “Mommy and Daddy can’t live together any more, but we still love you very, very much and will always be here to take care of you.” Neither of those are lies, but they are not equally developmentally appropriate.
And, as a confused child of divorce for many years, I do think it appropriate to be truthful about infidelity when the children are teens or older. I spent many unhappy years blaming my mother for making Daddy go away before I put it all together that he had been unfaithful. It was even more years of then hating him before I put it together that they had had an open marriage which my mother decided she could no longer participate in. She still loves him deeply, he still loves her deeply, they just simply can’t live together and be in a relationship. Complex, to be sure. There was something very comforting to me when I finally learned the whole truth. Wish it hadn’t taken 20 years to do it.
But the most common words for all body parts are the grown-up words: eyes, heart, head, ears, stomach, arms, legs. Standard English, just like store, dog, potato. I think it would be better if the standard terms were used in educating children; if the vulva or penis is no more euphemized or cacophemized than the arm or the leg, well, that’s essentially what we want to teach about sex, isn’t it?
WhyNot, I must agree that honesty is the best policy with children. Just try telling that to fighting/separating/divorcing/divorced parents (in a word, parents who don’t love each other, of which, sadly, there are very many). It’s also much easier for children to bounce back as adults if they’re told the truth as young as possible, even if part of that truth is “We’re getting divorced”.
In response to your ‘bolded’ point, perhaps I should have said that if the parent is there hammering away at the two year-old with penis and vulva, but NOT hammering away with “Nana was killed in a road crash”, “I don’t know if she’s going to heaven - personally I’m an atheist, so I don’t personally believe so”,“Nellie divorced Norm because he was having sex with his secretary”, then said kid may grow up thinking “Wow! This part of my body is very different, very special, very scary” - just the opposite of the intended effect.
To Matt: but an eye or an armpit doesn’t function like a penis does, neither the uterus/vulva/vagina complex. Kids know that. By using these words like ‘little sister’ and ‘willy’ you’re acknowledging that truth. A lot of cultures appear to do it too.
Well, no they don’t. Neither does a heart function like a kidney, or a tongue like a knee. They’re all specialized body parts belonging to different systems of the body. I don’t see what relevance this has to nomenclature.
It’s really about parenting not nomenclature.
We’re arguing over what nomenclature a parent should use. I say, use the standard nomenclature just as with all the other parts of the body. That would be penis and vulva.