So my SO and I are having a discussion. One of our friends works in child care and one of the kids she takes care of is a 2 1/2 year old girl. Ever since she started working there this girl does something a bit strange: she likes to put pressure on her private area by twisting her legs (she doesn’t touch herself though) and she moans. Totally freaked out our friend. Right now both her and the family is assuming that she is “discovering” herself. At first they told her not to do it. It did not stop however, and this was happening at all times in the home. The last instruction from the mom was not to do it in front of others.
So I have two questions: 1st, is this normal behaviour at such a young age? And second, how would you handle this situtaiton if your daughter were doing this?
I’m not an expert of any kind, but from what I’ve read, it seems this is actually pretty common and not a sign of anything wrong. If my child were doing it I’d just tell him/her not to do it in front of others. If the kid were mature enough to ask why, I’d say it’s not polite.
We just spoke to our friend. She said the girl does this at nap time now, and since they have a baby monitor she knows that she is up and doing it. It makes her feel uncomrftable knowing this and letting her do it. She comes into the room saying naptime is over, and the girl gets really upset, saying she wants to stay in bed.
I suggested that perhaps she should ask the mom to let her know that in addition to only doing this in provate that it also cannot interfere with other activities.
My SO says that if our daughter was behaving this way she would make her stop. I’m torn, I wouldn’t want her to feel like she is doing something wrong, but imagine her sleeping over her grandma’s and doing this!
One of the great misconceptions of our culture is that children are completely asexual. They aren’t. Their genitals have all the same nerve endings as grown up ones, and masturbation feels good to them, just as it does to us.
Sometimes people understandably worry that it means their child has been introduced to sexual pleasure by another, presumably grown up, person. This probably isn’t so. If the child were acting out by touching other people’s genitals or offering sexual favors, then yes. Just touching herself? No.
This does not mean that small children should be humping pillows or fingers whenever they like. They need to be taught that masturbation is a private time activity, like going to the bathroom. They should not do it in front of other people, because it is just for themself and no one else.
If your friend is upset at hearing her little girl masturbate, she needs to turn the volume of the baby monitor down or off, or she should remove the baby monitor entirely. The child is old enough to manage without it.
If the kid is supposed to be sleeping during naptime, she can just say “I heard you making noise during naptime. You must sleep at naptime, not play.”
In other words, this doesn’t have to be a “masturbation problem” that needs to be dealt with differently from any other behavior problem. Kids often amuse themselves in ways that are inappropriate for the setting. I would recommend your friend approach this the same way she would if the kid were jumping up and down and yelling during naptime.
One’s never to young to be taught guilt and shame in response to normal sexuality! :smack:
Exploring one’s own body is a normal early developmental stage. It’s also normal to seek stimulus that feels good.
So yes, it’s perfectly normal for children, including very, very young children to touch themselves for pleasure.
The time to intervene is when they’re doing it in socially inappropriate circumstances once they’re old enough to recognize that and change the behavior. Or when they’re doing it to the exclusion or detriment of other daily activities.
Otherwise, please don’t start installing any more sexual hangups than already occur naturally in our culture.
Yes, it’s normal. Most kids “discover” masturbation much younger – IIRC, the average age is 12-18 months.
As for how I handled it with my daughter – I explained to her that it is perfectly normal to touch herself, but it is a personal thing. She can do it as much as she likes in her room (or the bathroom) with the door shut. I don’t need to know about it unless something hurts. Until she is an adult, no one else has any business touching her anywhere that her underclothes should cover and if anyone tries, she should talk to me immediately.
Then again, I am not some prude who thinks that masturbation is dirty or wrong. I don’t think that children are somehow immune from feeling pleasure because they’re not 18. I don’t think that it makes any sense to teach a child that their genitalia is dirty or bad. Oh, and I absolutely despise people who are afraid to hear the real names for the parts to coming from a child’s lips. My children have known that it is a penis, vagina and anus from day one. The only “cutesy” name I ever used was “business” – as in “this is your business and no one else’. No one needs to know your business.” Although my son did decide that he likes to call his penis his “peefish” and we let him because it is funny and he would never use the word when speaking to the doctor.
To this day, if the bathroom (or bedroom) door is shut, we knock before entering – both because we have no interest in watching the kids rub one out and also because they have no desire for us to watch that.
**my daughter is 15, my son is 8 for reference
ETA: When I had the first ultrasound of my son, the nurse asked if we wanted to know the sex. We said that we would and she laughed and said “well, if he will stop playing with it, you can see his penis right there.” Yes, the boy was trying to rub one out in utero.
Let’s be clear on the narrative: The OP’s friend is a child care worker, not the girl’s mother. The monitor at nap time is part of the watching-the-children aspect of this. The child’s mother told the child not to do it in front of others. That seems like a reasonable directive. The child may not be aware of the monitor during nap time. The OP’s partner would try to make her own hypothetical child stop. The OP is concerned about what would happen if the child masturbated at grandma’s.
I agree with you guys, I just didn’t know it started so young. I don’t recall pleasuring myself until around 11.
As for our friend, we let her know that she should tune it out, and make sure mom isn’t sending the wrong message to her daughter about masturbation by making it seem like something wrong or bad.
There was a thread a while back on almost exactly the same thing. Someone’s little girl kept humping the furniture, even with people around… I looked for the thread but couldn’t find it. It had a lot of good comments in it. Does anyone remember this?
It’s totally normal, and trying to stop it will only give the kid hangups. Girls benefit greatly from having an understanding of their body before puberty. It allows them to have a better idea of what they are experiencing when they start facing the real thing.
Tell her it’s a private thing, to be done in private. Maybe it’s time to consider getting rid of the baby monitor.
I used to babysit for two young sisters who would hump pillows and sometimes each other while they were watching TV. As a young teenage babysitter, it was very uncomfortable to be around this, since I was only just discovering my own pleasures, and I couldn’t fathom girls so young being so compelled to do this that they would do it in front of me…no other children I have ever babysat for or birthed ever behaved this way. I pretty much told them that was private, and if they wanted to do that to go to their room by themselves…not while watching TV with the rest of us. I think they were probably 3 and 5 at the time.
Just also chiming in to say that it’s normal. I was four when I started, and my parents screwed up royally by telling me to stop (NOT telling me to just do it in private, just to stop altogether). Sigh. They were progressive people…I don’t know what went wrong. I guess they just couldn’t deal. I wasn’t a victim of molestation, I didn’t have anything wrong with me…I just really, REALLY liked how it made me feel, and still do, thankfully.
Anyway, telling the girl to stop clearly isn’t going to work. I tried stopping, or telling myself I was going to stop…right after this last time…and just thinking that it was so dirty, and that of course, I was dirty for doing it, and also being neurotic that somehow my doctor would realize after my check ups every year, and feeling like I dodged a bullet when it never came up…oy. When I finally read Judy Blume’s “Deenie” I realized there was a name for it and that it was normal and healthy to do it. But there were years of me thinking I was some kind of freak and that my body was broken.
Does telling someone to stop doing something that produces orgasms EVER work?
