I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and this thread actualized it. Adman writes:
In your opinion/experience, is this true? I may be a total freak, but I cannot remember a time before I had sexual urges. I was interested in the girls (and guys too, to be honest, but that’s intensified much more in later years) as soon as I got to meet any. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with them, but it was definitely something. I got the same kind of butterflies in the stomach as I do now. These days I react differently due to greater knowledge and experience, but the emotions and urges were definitely there.
I started masturbating early as well… 6 or 7 years of age maybe? I was definitely doing it when I started school, which happens at 7 years of age in Sweden.
Am I an oversexed freak? Do kids, generally speaking, have none of these urges?
I seem to recall having had crushes on girls and a fascination with my own naughty bits for as long as I can remember.
IANA psychologist, but I seem to recall that the idea of children’s being asexual was taken as fact in the Victorian era but was shattered by Freud – one of his legacies to modern psychology, in contrast to many ideas of his that have been disproven.
You can certainly feel sexual stimulation before that point. It’s not as if the nerve endings down there just start working one day. I don’t remember being interested in a girl until about age 10, but that’s not the same. I’ve heard anecdotes about kids getting themselves off at ages younger than that.
Kids touch themselves in the womb, and some folks have tried to say that indicates a sex drive (no cite, just remembering from college classes). Very young infants do the same thing, ask enough moms and they can tell you. However, does enjoying certain physical sensations mean you’re experiencing a drive to have sex? My profs all had different answers to that one. FWIW, I can remember a time before I had any interest in sex, and it wasn’t 10 or 11 as adman wrote.
Little kids certainly experience sexual feelings insofar as they become aware of the nice sensations that can be had from touching their genitals. Heh. Just take off a baby’s nappy (diaper) and watch them develop hand-penis/vagina co-ordination. They might not be able to grasp the rattle, but they can surely explore their own bodies in a very sexual way.
Little kids definitely like to “explore” down there. When I was teaching pre-school, I saw a whole lot of that, even in kids as young as two and three. I agree with Skeezix about it probably being more sensual than sexual.
Personally, I think I was aware that things in that area felt “different” than say, my arm. I can’t recall having any urges to do anything in that regard until much later, though.
I wonder if boys have sexual urges earlier than girls?
I’m a girl, and I have masterbated since I was an infant.
And my urges were definately “sexual”. Although I did not know what sex was, my fantasies would take on the same forms as adult fantasies, just with vaguer content. This was not some innocent rubbing. In those early fantasies were the seeds of a lot of the stuff that gets me off today.
Since it’s not the Pit, I’ll simply advise you to consider the source of the statement referenced, Priceguy
I second what everyone else says, we’re born sexual beings, nerve endings just don’t magically start feeling different one day. It takes puberty occuring for us to put a concrete idea of what to do with the feelings and sensations, but the desire for stimulation is there long before physical maturity.
I remember a professor who felt that the idea of children being “innocent” was a myth. He believed that children are definitely sexual beings. He said it becomes a question of what is appropriate in the child’s home culture.
Jeez, our friends’ young boy has been playing with himself since age 2. And at really inappropriate times.
I remember picking up my boy and and this other kid from daycare once (doing a favor for his mom); we stopped at the grocery, I loaded them both in a large cart and picked up a few things. We’re all in the checkout line, and I glance down and there he is idly whacking away on a little pencil-sized woody, for all the world to see. I distracted them both w/ some candy and beat a hasty retreat to the car.:eek:
WTF?! I didn’t masturbate until like age 14. Am I a freak? Maybe that’s why I don’t have a girlfriend. If you guys started at 2 or 3 then I am 11 years behind you.
I had a lot of very diffuse sexual feelings as a young child, but none sufficiently concrete for fantasies or masturbation. These began coalescing into something more concrete at age 9 or so, and started becoming attached to specific people around age 11.
So I suppose I didn’t have any sexual urges that could possibly have actually led to sex until about the age mentioned in the OP, but to claim that there was nothing before that would be bluntly false.
Come (no pun intended) to think of it, I seem to recall doing a whole lot of that in preschool! My teachers were worried that I had to go to the bathroom, because I kept sticking my hand down my pants. Hell no – I just liked playing with myself!
Seems to be a bit of confusion here, hence the qualification I made earlier.
Children two or three years old masturbating are not doing the same things that a fourteen or fifteen year old locked in the bathroom for an hour is doing. Or a thirty or forty year old, for that matter. (Yes gang, it’s the ultimate addiction, once you start, you’re hooked for life! Someone call Nancy Reagan, quick!)
The kid isn’t masturbating to orgasm, with that goal in mind, all the while fantasizing about someone of the same/opposite sex. They happen to rub that spot one day, it feels good (yes, even at two or three) so they do it some more. Without the intervention of an adult (“Leave it alone or it’ll never grow; We don’t do that at Sunday dinner; Hey, knock that off, we’re in the grocery store.”) they’ll eventually get bored or distracted and find something else entertaining to do.
Some kids give the practice up, or forget all about it, as they get a bit older, only rediscovering it when the hormone factory kicks into gear. And as some Dopers have mentioned, some don’t forget about it, and figure out what it’s all about earlier than others.
Maybe that’s why I don’t have a girlfriend. If you guys started at 2 or 3 then I am 11 years behind you.