Developing Healthy Sexuality in Infancy and Childhood Ages Under 8

Developing Healthy Sexuality in Infancy and Childhood Ages Under 8

There are strategic ways that we can talk to children, and approach sexuality in the early years, that can set children up to develop a healthy sense of their sexuality for life.

Providing healthy and good touch, bringing a matter of fact stance and neutrality to children learning about sexuality, and raising confident children are some of the ways that we can do this. Because I see addressing this to a couple separate age groups with very defining characteristics, I am going to break this blog up in two sections: Children who are under 4 years, and those who are ages 4-8. If you have a young child in either of these groups, and need help knowing what is age appropriate, and some helpful responses to natural behavior, hopefully this blog helps!

-Kathryn

Developing Healthy Sexuality in Children who are under 4 years old:

What if this started before birth, instead of at puberty?

Sexuality starts at conception, and we immediately refer to our babies as boys and girls. The documentary called Raising Cain talks about how we socialize our boys and girls in very different ways. When really at birth, there is very little difference between the two sexes, other than their private parts and sexual anatomy.

Thinking about your infant’s sexuality may be helpful in getting yourself comfortable with this concept of them being a sexual being. Even though the sexual behavioral system will only come online when they are teenagers, you are investing in their self-worth and self-knowledge from an early age.

What does sexuality look like in Infancy?

Babies like to touch themselves and will naturally touch their genitals. When my children have, I try to manage my own reactivity to this. A part of me wants to react strongly and say, “No, that’s not ok.” But then another part of me wants them to learn that genitals are no different to an elbow or a leg. And so a reflection like, “Oh that’s your vagina”, or “The skin there is so soft it feels good to touch”, might be something I would say. Mostly what I want to communicate is that there is nothing wrong with their interest and curiosity, and that they need to explore their entire body and not just certain parts of it.

At the same time, this doesn’t mean that they can overly focus on their private parts. It’s very natural for children to start to self-soothe by rubbing their genitals or by what I call humping. I don’t think of this self-soothing as masturbating, because this has a very negative connotation. Instead this is about self-soothing. Of course, there are many other ways to self-soothe and young children should be co-regulating with a parent, so parents can move in and help children to regulate in different ways. But if your child is humping, this could be a sign that they need help with soothing and calming their nervous system.

Benefits of talking to your young child about sexuality as early as possible:

  • You can avoid the big embarrassing and intense talk when puberty suddenly hits, you set up a foundation of healthy sexuality that you can add to over the years
  • Gives you time to get comfortable with your own sexuality and with having this conversation
  • Creates an atmosphere in the family context of comfort with sexuality, that prevents shame and guilt around sexuality

Ways to do this:

  1. Finding language that is correct and that you feel comfortable with
  2. Read the literature that is out there already, there are fabulous books, we’ve listed a few below
  3. Find an anatomy book, children love to draw and point to pictures
  4. Take them to the zoo and explain what is happening when they see the gorilla’s humping, or use other examples in nature as you see them happening, it takes the focus off of you and onto an experience they are already having
  5. Infant massage will set a foundation of good touch in your child’s life, skin to skin contact brings emotional security.
  6. Find ways to help your child to learn to self-soothe. The more you calm their nervous system, the more they will learnt to self-soothe. Then using calming music at bedtime, white noise machines, helping them attach to a transitional object, or soothing with a thumb or pacifier can be helpful too.
  7. Teaching good hand-washing practices after toileting. Young children are naturally proud of their excretions, so try not to give them the message that this is “bad”.

What’s Normal for Children at this age with regards to Genital Discovery:

  • Self-stimulation
  • Poking their fingers in their noses, ears, mouth, belly buttons and genitals
  • Interest in different urinating postures, even standing up for girls.

Sexuality is a hot topic when you are around 4 – 8 year olds.

Children in this age group love to run around naked. They find potty talk hilarious. If you’re a part of my family, the kids love to touch my booty. Let’s face it, it’s hard to avoid sexuality in the 4 – 8 year range. Children are gathering information during these years about their gender, about roles, about sexuality. So let’s lean into these awkward moments, and use their natural curiosity to educate them well.

One of the phrases that I say most during this age groups is: “Guys, that’s not appropriate”. My kids are still bathing together, and so they get lots of lectures about not touching each other’s private parts, about giving each other privacy when they are on the toilet. Learning to dress behind closed doors and learning to ask for personal space is a constant topic too.

At 4 and 5 they are just starting to identify with their gender, until then my 3-4 year old was still calling her vagina a penis and trying to pee standing up, as she wanted to emulate her older brother. These are natural moments to say, actually you’re a girl and you have a vagina, it’s boys who have a penis. Giving children correct information gives them a foundational knowledge. School education goes a far way to giving children a healthy awareness of privacy, actually sometimes they take this too far I think. Our children are hyper-vigilant about touch because the schools are so stringent on no one touching each other, when this is a very natural age to want to hug on their friends.

Potty talk:

This seems like a natural phase for children, and I personally try not to shut it down too much. I just go along with it, giggle at times, but also try to not give too much attention to it. Putting a sharp lid on it every time I think can exacerbate the excitement and secrecy of it. So I like to let it play itself out and then slowly put up a boundary, ok guys let’s change the topic, or enough potty talk for now. Of course this is going to depend on who your child is and how much they like to push the boundaries. Children who are more naturally curious and like touching themselves and talking about butts all day long, need tighter boundaries from the get go.

Sexual Talk:

In my experience, it’s around third grade that the boys are starting to giggle and whispering about sexual nuances. They are talking about heterosexuality and homosexuality. Some boys are more interested in this than others, but I’ve heard the conversations on the playground. It’s always been my goal to teach my children about sexuality before they hear it from anyone else. And at this age, the top questions are going to be – what is sex and how are babies made?

What to share and when to share?

And so what do we share and when do we share? The rule of thumb is to share as much as is needed and as little as is necessary. If you have a naturally curious child, consider telling them sooner than later. It’s also important to consider your social context, and what your children are being exposed to outside of your home.

I wouldn’t recommend telling a child before they are 7 years old, unless you are facing some special circumstances (ie. living in a very sexualized culture). Telling them at 7 is on the young side I think. The difficulty with this, is that most parents are telling their children about what is sex is, at a later age. So while you can talk to your child about it, which I did, you might be putting your child in the position to keep a secret. Depending on what you share with them, they might want to process the information in their social group. Of course you can reinforce with them, that this sex education is only to be discussed in the family, but some children may struggle to adhere to this. And this could put them in an awkward position socially to not talk to their friends about what they already know.

Telling them at 8 or 9, I don’t think I would wait for longer than this age to share with them, because then you are risking that they hear it from others first. Of course it’s important to consider your community here. If you are part of a more sheltered community, then you could probably wait until they are 11. But if your kids are part of a public school system, and they are hearing other kids talking on the play ground, then you can bet that they will hear it from someone else first, if you wait too long.

What’s normal in this age range:

  • Curiosity about sexuality begins.
  • Conscious of the navel, may even grab genitals.
  • Interest in bathroom activity of others. These children have interest in bathroom etiquette and genital words, such as ‘pee’ and ‘poo’.
  • Asking questions about sexuality. They have vague and somewhat magical notions about sex. Often believe that a “stork brings a baby”. These children think literally, a baby grows from mommy’s egg, and the egg look like those bought in a grocery store.
  • Playing doctor is common. Games of ‘show’ are common.

The scenario’s you want to be ready to deal with are:

  • Questions about where babies come from
  • Getting grabbed on your behind or your breasts
  • Their interest in seeing you naked
  • Questions about how the baby gets in and out of mommy’s tummy
  • The noise in your room last night
  • Whether a girl can marry a girl
  • What gay means

Resources:

Raising Cane documentary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9k0vKL5jJI

Understanding Children’s Sexual Behaviors: What’s Natural and Healthy

Toni Cavanagh Johnson, Ph.D   www.TcavJohn.com

God Made All of Me: A Read-Aloud Story to Help Children Protect Their Bodies, Justin & Lindsey Holcomb

Preventing Child Abuse

Preventing Child Abuse

DEVELOPING HEALTHY SEXUALITY IN YOUNG CHILDREN: PREVENTING CHILD ABUSE

We all want to keep our children safe from danger, especially from sexual child abuse and molestation. At the same time we don’t want them walking around fearful of the outside world and seeing human beings as dangerous.

I know that for myself, coming from a family-oriented culture, it is equally important that my children are respectful of adults and friendly to people in general. In South Africa we grew up kissing adults hello, and we still do this. So within our different cultures, how do we find a way to educate our children to be open and friendly, and yet give them a healthy sense of protection at the same time.

My belief is that one of the best ways to prevent children from being hurt, is to raise resilient children, who have a healthy self-confidence, and who are able to speak out and to say “No”. Children who understand the difference between right and wrong, can trust their intuition, and have the confidence to speak up when things don’t feel right – that is what we are aiming for. This inner confidence provides an intrinsic protective factor. It takes time to promote this internal confidence in children and will serve them well once they have it. But it’s not all that it will take to protect our children and to keep them safe.

We need to be explicit when teaching our children about healthy sexual boundaries and giving them a solid foundation of correct information on sexuality. Teaching them about anatomy, giving them a language they can be comfortable using, giving them examples of what danger could occur and concrete examples of how to manage these scenarios.

The topical areas to cover would be:

Private Parts:

Children should know the difference between private parts and other public body parts. The parts that are covered by our swimming clothes are private. And private means that only oneself, a loving parent and a doctor may touch them and with permission. Boys have a booty and a penis, and girls have a vagina, a booty and breasts.

Secrets:

Secrets are often associated with abuse, and so we teach children to not keep secrets because they don’t have anything to hide from you. They won’t ever get into trouble for sharing a secret with you. Surprises on the other hand are good, they make you feel happy. It’s ok to keep something a surprise, like the gift you’re buying for your friend’s birthday.

How to Say No and Get Help:

When something feels wrong or uncomfortable, I like to teach my children to say 3 things, and we practice these together.

  1. Say NO!
  2. Run away
  3. Go and tell

Say NO as loudly as you can, as angrily as you can, say it with a mad face, say it with a firm voice. Kids love to play and practice, so turn this into a game, and help them learn a serious lesson in the process. Then run away and think out loud about all the people that they could go and tell. And what would they tell? Mommy, someone touched me on the butt. Mommy, someone looked at me and I felt funny inside. Mommy, someone tried to touch me on my private parts. It’s important for them to practice this and to say it out loud.

Stranger Danger:

It’s ok to be friendly with people in general, but also important to maintain some boundaries around people that we don’t know, until we know them a better. There are different levels of relationships, going from stranger, to acquaintance, to friend and to close trusted other. Imagine drawing our circles of closeness on the floor and having your child identify who would be in those different circles. You share more intimate details with those you are closest too, and it takes time for that trust to build. At the same time, you are more cautious around strangers until you’ve had time to get to know them.

Along with this, making sure your child knows their full name and home address, and your phone number.

Inappropriate Boundaries:

Unfortunately, most often molestation and inappropriate touch happens to our children in our own communities, with people whom we know. This makes it more confusing for children. Some of these people are adults, and it also frequently happens with our children’s peers. When peers are older and are sexually curious, or when peers have been exposed to pornography or their own molestation, they might act out what they have been exposed to, on our children. Some children struggle to regulate themselves and might also touch and hug and violate human space boundaries just because they are still learning about what personal space is.

Knowing what is normal at different ages is really important, so that we are vigilant, but at the same time, we don’t overreact. I’ve had families seek out counseling when there have been inappropriate sexual boundaries crossed, with family friends. It can be awkward to navigate, as we don’t want to lose friendships over poor boundaries, but at the same time, we want our children protected. Finding a way to have these conversations with our family friends is important and can be done.

Supervision:

Many children like to play “doctor-doctor”. Putting boundaries around this game can prevent the touch from becoming inappropriate, or from having children take off their clothes. Having the play the game on dolls and soft toys works better than their own body parts. And if you do find them undressing, put these boundaries in place, in a neutral way. “I know that you are curious and enjoying this game, but we don’t undress in front of our friends, you can play doctor on your dolls instead”.

Supervision is also necessary when our children are hanging around older children who are sexually curious, or around children of the same age, who have trouble with regulation and keeping personal space in general. My daughter loves to hug her friends, and one day she hugged her friend so hard, that they fell over, and my daughter was lying right on top of her friend. It looked a little odd, and it was just at this moment that the friend’s parent walked into the room. I called the parent after the play date and addressed what had happened. “You walked in and might have seen something that looked inappropriate. As you know my daughter loves to hug and they fell over and that’s how they ended up in that position. I wanted you to know that I saw that and how it happened. Have you had any problems with the way my daughter hugs your daughter?” She had actually not even noticed what happened, but I was glad to have dealt with it so quickly, establishing that these types of communication is fine in our relationship.

Protecting our children from abuse is important to us all. We can do this through setting up internal and external factors. Intrinsic protective factors will include good self-esteem, assertiveness and confidence. External protective factors will include supervision and having rules and boundaries around certain games and places to play.

And if you have questions, concerns, or just want to additional help navigating and communicating about these topics, I invite you to contact myself or another therapist. It’s important to build a healthy sexual foundation from the start.

-Kathryn

Helping Our Kids Develop Healthy Sexuality By Understanding Our Own

Helping Our Kids Develop Healthy Sexuality By Understanding Our Own

Part of helping our kids develop healthy sexuality is looking at what we as parents are bringing to the table.

For a lot of us, the thought of talking to our kids about developing a healthy sexuality is hugely anxiety producing. Now part of that may be that it’s just new; anything thats new and never experienced before is going to inherently make us a little nervous because we can’t fully predict what’s going to happen – that’s totally normal! Also normal is that this feeling might come from a sense that we’re not equipped to have the conversation. For a lot of us, we might no have had the best examples to follow. For most of us I would imagine, our parents or caregivers or community didn’t do an adequate job talking with us about sex.

For me, this looked like my mom sitting me down over a bowl of ice cream, I had to have been 8 or so, and reading Dr. Spock’s “Where did I come from?”. It’s a picture book with funny illustrations that says an orgasm feels like “a sneeze, but much better”. I distinctly remember laughing out loud when she told me a man’s penis goes inside a woman’s vagina. I’m pretty sure I thought the whole thing was really funny at the time. As I got older though and had a lot of questions starting to build up about sex, but I never quite felt it was okay to bring up again. From my perspective, my mom sat me down very formally and basically said here’s this big secret that adults know and kids don’t and then never brought it up again. It felt very similar to when she told me that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy weren’t real. Both those secrets though had few lasting consequences in comparison to the complexity of sex. This feeling of secrecy made it difficult for me to know it was okay to ask questions when I started to have experiences around sex, like when I stumbled upon pornography watching tv late one night after my parents went to sleep, or when I hugged a boy in 8th grade and felt that he had an erection.

This feeling of not being able to ask questions forced me to get my sexual education elsewhere and what I was hearing really scared me. Though I was not raised a Christian, from an early age I actually chose decided not to have sex until marriage because I was afraid of it, though I still had some. And because I didn’t have a healthy view of myself sexually I ended up having some very damaging experiences in late high school and early college. Then I became a Christian and heard the whole “no sex before marriage” business and I REALLY became scared. I never developed an understanding of sex as being a good thing.

Needless to say when I got married, my husband and I have had to work on a few things after we got married. But the important thing is we have. Over the past six and a half years Dave and I have spent many hours in long conversations and in individual and couples counseling tending to the unhealthy patterns that developed in our sexual lives, among other things. And because of this I can stand here and confidently say that sex is a beautiful, sacred part of my life where I find joy and intimacy. And it is also something I will be journeying through for the rest of my life.

Now imagine for a minute if I hadn’t invested all of that energy coming to a more healthy place sexually, what kind of message do you think I would have offered my kids about their sexuality? If I allowed the fear of sex to be my only understanding of it? What I know is that fear breeds fear. Our kids look to us as a guide for what is safe and healthy and good and if sex is not one of those things for you right now, despite how much you might want something different for your kids, it might be difficult for them to get that message.

Your story may not look like mine. There may have been shame, abuse, confusion, anxiety, addiction or there may have been confidence and support and wholeness and self love. But whatever it was and is for you right now, we have to understand that it is going to affect the way we present sexuality to our kids. So my hope for you is that not only do you desire to look at your own sexuality for the sake of your children, but that you might be encouraged to understand yourself in this area for your own emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

Some helpful questions to consider (some adapted from Parenting from the Inside Out):

  1. What did your parents, family, and community teach you about sex?

  2. What examples did you witness of sexuality?

  3. How did that information shape your view of your own sexuality?

  4. How have your childhood experiences around sexuality influenced your relationships as an adult?

  5. Are there elements of your sexual past that are particularly difficult to think about?

  6. What would you like to heal or change about the way you understand your own sexuality?

Best wishes in this important season for you and your family. We’re here to journey with you through it,

Mariah McQueen

Is _ Okay?

Is _ Okay?

I get asked this question in its various forms, especially in Christian circles, all the time.

Is maturbation, same-sex marriage, sex before marriage, pornography, etc. okay? All these difficult sex conversations can be difficult to answer as a family. Please let me preface this conversation by saying that I am not going to give you an answer at the end of this post. My hope however is to give you a little bit of a road map on how to come to a more comfortable and confident stance by giving you some questions to ask yourself (and your partner). See, when it comes to uncomfortable conversations, often times our first response is to look for a quick yes or no answer – is it okay or not? But in reality, this does little for us in the long term because it doesn’t answer the “why?” part of these conversations, which in my experience, is essential to finding lasting wholeness and creating positive habits. If you take the time to answer “why?” for yourself and your family, regardless of someone else’s opinion, you can stand firmly on yours.

So, how do we get there? First, know that it will hopefully be through a series of conversations, rather than happen overnight. On a couple of these issues, my husband I have spent months talking through their many layers. In some instances, we sought out the counsel of trusted others whose wisdom and guidance helped us find confidence in our positions. The process can be slow, which requires patience and diligence, but the payoff is absolutely worth it. You will find yourself confidently owning your convictions, knowing you put in the work to get there, which makes having conversations with your kids around these topics way less anxiety producing!

Here are some helpful questions to consider as you discuss these (and other) nuanced issues related to sex:

  1. What is your belief in the purpose of sex?

  2. What is your personal experience with _________? Is there any healing that needs to happen around that area?

  3. If you are coming from a faith background, what evidence do you see regarding God’s posture towards it?

  4. Does this action (or acceptance of an action) help you love yourself and others more freely, and does it allow you to love God more deeply and with more of yourself? (Question from Tara Owens of http://www.anamcara.com/)

  5. If it is an action, is this part of our life known? Do we have a support system outside of our family to seek guidance if issues do arise?

I want to acknowledge that these issues are nuanced and complicated in nature, making firm answers hard to find. My hope for you is that this would not bread anxiety but that you would have peace knowing you have done hard work on your journey of seeking truth.

Blessings to you!

Mariah

What is a Healthy Sexuality?

What is a Healthy Sexuality?

When I’m considering a concept like healthy sexuality, I like to think of the end product.

So if you produce children who have a healthy concept of sexuality, what will they be like in their teens, in their 20’s, and in their adult years? I’d like my children to have confidence in who they are, I’d like them to be safe and be able to protect themselves sexually. I’d like them to be able to manage their sexual urges and make wise decisions with their sexuality. I’d like them to have rewarding sexual experiences in life, being able to participate in a reciprocal sexual relationship within a loving and committed partnership, knowing what feels good and what doesn’t, and to have the confidence to get their sexual needs met.

Where would you like your children to end up?

To achieve these goals I think our children need to have a strong self-esteem, effective communication skills, comfort with their own bodies. I’d venture to say that a healthy sexuality entails understanding your values, being able to regulate yourself, being comfortable with vulnerability and intimacy. I think we’d all agree, that healthy sexuality goes way beyond the sexual act itself. Sex is more than just sex, it’s more than an orgasm. It’s couched in a relationship with self and with other.

I spoke with a mum recently who was worried that her children would grow into promiscuous teens. We talked about her fears, and ways she could work on their resiliency. Do they have good relationships with men and women? Are they starved for affection, do they struggle with their self-esteem, are they looking for attention and do they struggle to regulate themselves? I believe that if your child has experienced joy and excitement in life in healthy settings, then they are more likely to be able to regulate this emotion in the teenage years. They are less likely to seek this out in unhealthy ways.

I love this American concept of the daddy-daughter dance. To give young girls the experience of having fun and feeling treasured within a healthy relationship, goes far in building their self-worth. It gives them a template of feeling loved and of being treated with respect. Of course not all girls have fathers, but I’ve seen young girls and women go to these events with an older brother, with a grandfather, with a friend of the family.

The concept of regulation is so important, to teach children how to say no, to manage their desires, to manage down time and quiet time. My children are addicted to their Ipads, and so this becomes a natural environment in which to teach them regulation skills. We expect our children to develop an internal monitor to tell them when it’s time to take a break. As they were 3 – 5 years old, we’d do the monitoring for them. But now that they are 5, 7 and 9 years old, they can put on a timer and stop themselves when they’ve hit their time limit. We talk with them a lot about regulating themselves, and reward them when they remember to do it for themselves.

Being comfortable spending time alone is something else that I want to work with them on. I recently decided I would give them an hour on weekends to play by themselves. I think that it’s important to know how to be with others, but also how to be comfortable within yourself and to enjoy spending time alone, to develop comfort with silence.

Some of the greatest joy I feel as a parent, is when I see my children being free and spontaneous. Seeing my 7 year old today, dancing and singing at the top of her lungs without any shame, brought a smile to my face. I found myself thinking, if she can feel this good and this free on a regular Saturday afternoon, then perhaps she won’t believe that she needs drugs or to be promiscuous one day, in order to feel good and to lose herself in a false sense of freedom.