My children are one and two and really into naming body parts. The boy is two, and can identify his penis - as penis. However, when my little girl points “down there” and asks “dis?,” I haven’t come up with a good word I like.
People have suggested vagina, but vagina isn’t general enough. It needs to be something understandable, that no one will laugh at. A girlfriend suggested “jade gate” – very poetic, but when she goes running to the teacher after getting hit in dodge ball with “he hit me in the jade gate” it ain’t gonna fly. I don’t really like “crotch” or “groin” and pelvis doesn’t do it for me either - not exactly right.
I might get stuck with “mons” or “vulva”. But before I give in…I give it to the floor.
My brother and sister-in-law use “vulva”. I don’t see what’s wrong with this, if you’re using “penis” for the boy. Both are Latin terms for the area in question.
OTOH, the same kids know the word for breast as “bobby.” This is because their parents believe in extended nursing, and they don’t want to embarass others if the girls start demanding “bobby” in the middle of a restaurant.
I used the word “privates” for all that stuff down there. I think that works well because it is fairly general, but it tells obviously what the area in question is.
The pediatricians I’ve worked with always encourage parents to use the correct names for body parts when the toddler starts to ask. They say it helps to encourage healthy attitudes about sex later on. (I’m not sure if there’s evidence to back that up–I somehow doubt it–but it makes sense to me.)
That said, “female organs” might be a good generality, if you want to avoid “vagina”.
I don’t see what’s wrong with vagina myself. If you’re going to use penis for boys, I really don’t know vagina isn’t “general” enough. you’re afraid people would laugh at “vagina”- not at “penis”?
The definitive word for it in my family is “bottom”. Even though “bottom” can also mean “buttocks”, as in “where you get spanked”, I think most people (and all toddlers) don’t have any trouble deducing the meaning from the context. The question, “Is your bottom sore?” can be amplified with, “Where the pee comes out? Or where the poop comes out?”
As a Politically Correct First-Time Mom, I tried to teach The Cat Who Walks Alone that it was her “vagina”, until I realized that she was consistently mispronouncing it as “pachina”. So I gave up and started referring to it as her “bottom”.
And if you want to be very specific, you can use the word “crack”, as in “don’t get soap in your crack when you’re in the tub”.
When I was in high school, I babysat a two-year-old who referred to it as her “tuss” (rhymes with “puss” as in “pussy”). As a sheltered teenager I was puzzled as to where she got it from, but as a more sophisticated adult I figured it out. I’ve always wondered about the parents who would tell her to call it that, and whether she was mispronouncing it or whether they said “tuss” to her.
Well, my lovely mother-in-law who is a church-going, God-fearing, Sunday-school-teaching jewel of a woman has always referred to it as her “twat.” She is teaching my niece the same terminology. It’s very embarassing.
Having read through the thread, I’m tending toward Lorna’s “privates” (so to speak). Her teacher will know what she means. It kind of includes the idea that there’s something special about this particular part. The only problem is it’s not gender specific. Although you could explain, when necessary, that the vagina is part of a girl’s privates and a penis is part of a boy’s.
Vulva is not bad, and has the advantage, unlike privates, of being gender specific.
Vagina on the other hand, I think is lousy. Wouldn’t any child pointing and asking “What’s dis?” (pointing to the place she pees out of- and not really thinking about sex and childbirth) and being told “vagina” conclude she pees out of her vagina? There are people- some of them even female people- who actually think this!
I hate it when people of any age refer to all of women’s genitalia with the term vagina. The general term for the external female genitalia is vulva. The vagina is the birth canal. One idiot in my acquaintance said that women have no external genitilia, they have a vagina instead. (oh, his poor future wife.)
Please never tell a child that the baby is in the mommy’s tummy. Tummy is baby talk for stomach. Tell them it is in her womb or her belly. Belly is a nice common word that means the middle and specifically includes the uterus.
You should probably avoid “Jade Gate.” It’s a reference in certain circles of Chinese society to the anus, specifically as it pertains to intercourse. “Entering the Jade Gate” so to speak. (I read it in some kind of white slavery article, or account, of a woman who was sold into slavery in the Chinese sex trade. Or maybe it was a novel, hell I can’t remember.) I don’t remember the story, but I do remember the reference. I vote for privates. I think TMI at a young age does not foster healthy attitudes about sex later on. IMO, it creates a preoccupation with a subject that they’re not prepared to deal with. Just my 2 cents.
My daughter always called it her “P.C.” Got it from my wife. I think it was a family thing. My son has a regular ol’ penis, though. Despite my efforts to promote “wangle-dangle” and “jamoke.”
I’m fine with pet names for body parts but I think they should at least know the correct terms. I don’t think this is too much information. My 7-year-old boy refers to his penis as ‘penis’, but I can’t seem to break him of calling his testicles ‘balls’. Usually he’ll say something about them and I’ll try to get him to use the right word, but he’ll insist they’re balls because they FEEL like balls. I can’t argue with that. Sometimes he’ll give in and say, “Fine, testamals, whatever.”
My mom called girl stuff ‘pocho’ - I don’t know where that came from, maybe a Spanish word? My sister and her girls call it ‘coochie’. As far as breats, pretty much everyone in my family calls them ‘chi-chis’.
I used to babysit two little girls whose mother was a gynecologist. The little one was about 4 when I took them to an amusement park. She was trying to show her friend how to sit on a banister when she said (quite loudly), “When you climb up you gotta put your BAGINA on it.” Pretty funny, I thought.
When we were little tots, we were taught to call it “vagina”; of course in our minds it became confused with “China,” so we took to calling it the “China.” I remember associating its slit shape with slit-shaped Chinese eyes and thought that was the reason for calling it “China”. How else would you expect a little kid to make sense of it?
I agree wholeheartedly with lee that the vulva should not be confused with the vagina, even though it’s a very common error.
Ina Mae Gaskin’s book Spiritual Midwifery uses down-home folksy terms for the female anatomy (to put women at their ease by not using coldly clinical Latin words). She calls it the "puss."
But, you know, “coochie” sounds cool and even more down-home and folksy. Deep South Backwoods, even. Does this explain the origin of the term “hoochie coochie dancer”?
Muddy Waters sang, "I’m da hoochie coochie man." No translation needed.
My wife is from India and she taught the kids an Indian unisex term for both boys’ and girls’ pudenda: puttu (rhymes with put two, as in “I put two pies on the windowsill”).
As the mother of a 5 year old boy, I’ve struggled with this question often. Before the start of kindergarten, my son’s preferred word was “pee-wee”, referring to the groin area. Now that he’s started school, I’ve heard quite a few variations on this, most recently being “Hey Mom, he kicked me in the sack.” I also have a 5 year old nephew who refers to it as his “privacies”, which is pretty funny.
As a young child, I called mine a “part”. Weird term, I know, but when I was little and would bathe, my parents would always ask, “Did you wash behind your ears, your face, your feet…” and “Did you wash that part,” referring to my groin area. So I naturally assumed that it was called a “part”. These days, I use the term “squirrel” more often than not.
Thank God my son has not asked what little girls have “down there”. I have no clue what I would tell him…
