I think a lot of people are blowing smoke up your ass OP for the sake of coming across as progressively PC. I think they are only being half honest when they say it wouldn’t bother them. It wouldn’t bother me as a man, as long as you have no problem with me treating your kid as if he didn’t exist, because that’s exactly how I would treat him. I wouldn’t talk to him, look at him and if was playing to close to me for too long. I’d move.
That’s pedophilia hysteria fault, not mine, nor your sons. Strangers naked 4 year old kids make me uncomfortable yes, because western society has drilled it into other peoples heads that every man is a potential pedophile. You may not think so, your wife may not think so, I certainly don’t but I guarantee you some busy body on the beach will probably be watching the men with hawk-eyes because of it, and all actions become suspect with their fingers resting on 911. I’d rather pass on that shit, I just want to enjoy a day on the beach.
You’re not going to find a beach that’s just populated by half-honest Dopers out there either. So take that for what it’s worth.
A naked 4 y-o wouldn’t disturb me. That’s not PC, that’s just me being used to naked 4 y-os on beaches. I’d be more disturbed by one in, say, a mall or a restaurant. But a beach? Fine by me. I’m also OK with nudity at the Ol’ Swimming Hole, the sauna and the lake.
But think about it. If someone else’s kid takes their clothes off and starts running around, why would you have any particular reason to feel disturbed? You and dozens of others are probably experiencing the same situation, so it would only get awkward if everyone else and the parents decided to uniquely focus on you, somehow uniquely focusing on the kid.
Since that is unlikely to happen, there is no real reason to feel disturbed by some random kid who escaped his clothing (unless there is some seriously irrational fear of pedophilia, that can somehow be attributed to the situation). I’m not sure why that has to be progressive/PC, but most people have been indifferent, the few times I’ve seen it happen.
But that’s not at all what you asked. You didn’t ask when girls start to get self-conscious and want to cover up. You asked at when girls should start to cover up. If you seriously believe these are at all the same question, there’s a whole host of other issues there I find deeply troubling.
As a data point, I was always pretty adamant about having my chest covered, even as a small child. Probably because my parents didn’t let us just run around naked outside of the house. It was firmly established in our household that public nudity simply Wasn’t Done, and that was that.
I live in the Dominican Republic and a lot of little boys don;t wear pants until they are about 5 years old. Just T-Shirts. MY mother back in Tenn was making dresses for little girls here for a local mission. One day the mission sent her a picture of a dozen girls dressed in her dresses. There in the foreground a 4 year old boy had wandered with nothing on except a short T-Shirt. Mom started making shorts for boys and sending them along with the dresses.
As an 8 year old the Y only allowed us in the pool totally nude. It wasn’t until years later that it became common wisdom that they Y was gay owned and operated.
Fortunately: We’re talkin’ the beach here and there’s little more porous than beach sand. His tot urine won’t be puddling up anywhere.
Unfortunately: Have you seen a 4 year old kid pee before? It arcs out for like 20 frikkin’ feet. The durn thing creates it’s own rainbow. It’s like one of the fountains at the Bellagio, only less predictable. Just make sure you’re not in the line of fire whenever nature calls. Every little boy wants to be a fireman and you do not want to be a burning house.
The kid wouldn’t bother me, not at any kind of bathing location. That’s the age when I’d expect them to still be in the middle of the process of understanding that there are places where you wear a bathing suit (which at that age I’d expect to be built along the lines of “colored panties/boxers”) and that you have to put one on when you’re going to the restaurant - at the edge of the water, not required for someone that age.
The people fussing over a naked 4yo would bother me, as do the 4yo girls in bikinis (which tend to end up becoming chokers anyway, as the wearer is simply not bikini-built).
I don’t have kids myself, but I had a significantly younger brother that I spent a lot of time caring for. One of the things we still talk about to this day are the time he’d pull off all of his clothes and go running down the street (at 3 years or so). The kid hated clothes.
And yet, a few years later, this kid who’d fight you over clothes suddenly started wearing them without any real complaint. No change in parenting that I was aware of. It’s simply that somewhere between 3 and 5, something clicked and he went “Oh… even if clothes are uncomfortable, I’m sure as heck not going out there naked.”
So I’m all in favor of letting kids run around naked essentially as long as they’re comfortable doing it. Maybe there are a few outliers who’d still be doing it at socially unacceptable ages, but those are going to be few and far between. Once kids hit a certain developmental stage, they become much more self-conscious and more focused on fitting in. You don’t have to teach that. (If anything, it seems like a parent needs to work to unteach it).
As far as pedophiles go: I dare anyone to find me a study that shows how naked children on a beach are more likely to be abused or kidnapped than a clothed child at home with a trusted relative. Seriously people. Like most rapes and murders, most sexual abuse of a child is by someone they know and trust.
Is this a situation where concern about pedophiles is an issue? No, that’s just silly.
Would I personally put some clothes on my kid? Yes. My daughter is three, so roughly the same age. If I were changing her from her clothes into her suit, and she broke free and ran around nude, I’d give her a few minutes to act like a goofball, and then she’s back in the suit. One of the first comments mentioned “trashy” … in the area where I’m in, letting your kid play in the nude for a short while is both indulgent and fun, but an all day thing would be trashy, like the parent couldn’t even be bothered to do the minimal work of putting clothes on the kid. I don’t think this is correct or incorrect in any objective sense – but I am aware it is the social norm of the area where I live. Also, sun screen.
Context does change my opinion, of course. My daughter (3 years old) was recently car sick, so THAT was fun, and I basically stripped off her pukey shirt in the parking lot, and then carried her into a travel stop – walking through the convenience store part to get to the rest room. She was not exactly crying, but hiccuping and sniffling, and I had a roll of paper towels under my arm. A man made the comment “that girl is too old to be in a store without a shirt!” which I was pretty eye-rolly about, it wasn’t like I was doing it for kicks. But while it was obvious to me that this was an “in duress” situation, maybe that part wasn’t apparent to him. Oh well.
Not really – although yeah, kids should know at that age you don’t pee on the beach right in front of everyone. That and sunburn. As for little girls in bikinis, most of the ones I’ve seen aren’t like, string bikinis, they’re mostly ruffles.
As for pedos? The really sick thing is that they’re going to be jerking off to these kids whether they have clothes on or not. shudder
Well, I see naked little kids at various Austin creeks and rivers on a semi-regular basis, and it’s never bothered me. A naked 4 year old boy jumping in Bull Creek or a 4 year old girl splashing in Lady Bird Lake in just her panties hardly even registers with me.
My experience has been that, most kids develop some natural modesty around that age, or shortly afterward, so nudity among kids substantially older than that is very rare.
Children are also more likely to be molested by relatives or their own parents than random strangers; to be really safe you need to send your kids off to live with the Mongolians and build a wall so they can’t get back into town. In answer to the OP; the nudity wouldn’t bother me (nor would it for a 14 yr old or a 40 yr old), but the public urination would.
I think your post says a whole lot more about you than it does about your alleged “half-honest Dopers.” I’m sorry that you are so hung up (heh) on nudity and sexuality that you are so threatened by a naked toddler. I hope you don’t have children.
Yup. The heightened media profile of paedophilia creates an environment where perfectly innocent people fear being misunderstood as dangerous predators - if I see a distressed/alone child in the street, my initial reaction is fear that an attempt to offer assistance will be perceived as a predatory advance.
For the same reason, although I don’t have a problem with little kids running about naked, I sense a sort of obligation to be understood to be not-looking. This can actually make things worse, because trying to not-look is awkward and that awkwardness may appear suspicious.
Parent A lets child B run around in the buff, causing person C to refuse to interact with the child because of his fear that stranger D will call 911? Does this happen in reality?
We certainly seem to have gotten ourselves into quite the kerfuffle if A is now regulating the clothing status of B based on unrelated person C’s ideas about hypothetical person D. Especially since actual pedophile E is nowhere to be seen in this scenario.
To be honest, I think some people are at that point. It pretty closely matches what a friend told a friend when they blogged a picture of their toddler in the bath. The Facebook messages went something like “But someone might look at that picture and then someone might accuse them of having child porn and now that picture will come up in their browser history and, after all, who would want to see pictures of your kids in the tub if they weren’t into child porn?” It was all just a little bit hysterical (use either definition - they both fit).