Let’s talk about (child) sex (uality)

My oldest daughter turned 13 this summer, and she looks very much like she’ll look until she enters college. She may get a little taller and her figure a little fuller, but her features are all there now. Not one trace of baby roundness touches her anywhere. Lena is a beautiful young woman who turns the heads of young men everywhere she goes.

I see her watch herself in the mirror frequently, and remember doing the same thing at her age. She smiles, frowns, flips her bangs up and back down again. Turns to the side, looks at her tan lines from the summer. Stands on tiptoe to see if the back pockets of her jeans look good. Turns back around to make sure she’s just right before leaving the bedroom for the morning. She is blooming – it is apparent in everything she does. Clearly, she’s feeling the hormonal shift of the early teen years and trying to find her place in a world that suddenly seems supercharged with sexual energy.

Many adults believe that this is the beginning of sexuality in children – the early teen years when suddenly boys have leg hair and girls have breasts. But that’s simply not true. Human beings are sexual creatures from the beginning of their lives. It’s just that this is the first time their sexuality is immediately visible to the outside world.

Birds do it, bees do it…

I know that it makes some adults uncomfortable to acknowledge that young children, even infants, are already sexual (though certainly not ready to be sexually active for a very long time). But it makes sense, biologically speaking. Though humans have socially, economically and intellectually evolved to a place where baby-making isn’t the primary goal for many, it is our most basic biologic function. Like every creature on earth, we were put here to propagate.

That’s why it feels good to touch and be touched. Just ask any fivemonth-old baby who manages to grab at his or her genitals during a diaper change. This isn’t an early perversion showing itself. It just feels good. Babies in utero are seen touching themselves frequently during ultrasounds. The drive to reproduce is deep in every race, including ours.

Toddlers, preschoolers, kindergartners and grade schoolers are all, to some degree, exploring their own physical selves, and sometimes the physical self of someone else, too. (“Wanna play doctor?”) This discovery process is normal and healthy. It gives our children the ability to claim their bodies for themselves, so that later, when it’s time to share with someone else, they feel a sense of ownership and therefore the right to say “No” when they don’t want to be physical.

House rules

So, what’s a parent’s part in this process, aside from being the dismayed mother or father who really can’t have Jimmy playing with himself in the living room during a dinner party? It’s tough. I have tried hard to give my children a sense of positive sexuality without shame. Still, there were a few months during potty training when I thought I might explode if I saw my son leading himself around by the penis one more time!

Just like with most things in child-raising, we have to start placinghealthy, appropriate limits as our child is able to understand and comply. With self-exploration, this is usually in the early toddler years. It’s not so hard to say in a positive voice, “We only touch ourselves in private. You should go do that in your bedroom.” It’s an early boundary, but an important one.

There is another really important boundary to set early. Tell your child exactly who is allowed to touch their genitals and why. This can be done in a positive way, too. “It’s your body. Mommy and Daddy can touch you there to clean you up, and the doctor can touch there if you’re hurt. That’s it.” While your 22-month-old probably won’t understand all of that, she will by the time she’s three. And she will have heard it for so long, it will already be a written-in-stone law of the house.

Stay positive

Of course, there might be times when that law gets broken during the normal sex play that most kids engage in. At some point during the grade school years, it’s likely that your child will explore their body with another child.

As long as it’s clear that both/all children were consenting, there is no need to be angry. As a matter of fact, anger will likely just instill shame or fear about sex. Instead, firmly restate the family rule about only touching ourselves, and only in private. Assuming the kids involved still want to play together (there’s no reason they shouldn’t!), plan activities where you’re directly participating. Craft or baking projects, trips to a wading pool or park and family games are all fun things you can do together.

It seems like there are so many things to teach our children, all the time. When they reach adulthood, we want them to like vegetables and work hard and volunteer for social organizations and vote responsibly and be happy and make other people happy and floss every day and keep their first apartment clean and, and, and … Teaching our children about positive sexuality and to love and respect their bodies is one more thing on a very long list, but it’s a very important thing. VS