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Girl parts
- May 27, 2009 at 3:26 PM
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The other night my 2-year old daughter was sitting on her potty and decided to do some explorations. She really likes cleaning lint off of herself, although usually this obsession is focused on her toes. She is quite flexible (when she was breach she was doing an interesting yoga pose in me), and managed to get a good view of what's down there.
She freaked out.
"What IS it? What IS it?"
"It's OK. It's OK. That's your girl part. It's supposed to be there. It's OK. All girls look like that."
She continued to look a bit frantic and alarmed, and she kept pulling up her girl parts so that she could see the opening of her vagina.
Eventually, she points to me and says, "I see yours too, Mommy. I want to see yours."
"Umm...let me see if I can find a picture of one for you." So, I run into my bedroom and look through What to Expect the First Year and the Toddler Years, but there is not picture. I try to find a pregnancy book still left upstairs, but all I can find are the instructions for the midwives on how to do perineal massage. I don't want her seeing a picture of fingers stretching out that area and thinking that this is what she's supposed to do.
My husband is sitting in her rocking chair observing all of this, telling her "It's OK, it's OK."
Eventually she became interested in something else, and we got her diaper on. Then, of course, it was naked baby time (during which she runs up and down the hallway screaming "naked baby" in her diaper), which is always a good activity to do right before bedtime.
When the topic comes up again, what information do I give her? She's only 26 and a half months old. She has a very large language capacity and is rather precocious, but she is still a baby, right?
I don't want to be caught so unaware next time.
Comments:
We've been going through a Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas phase recently!
I would try to find a medical picture of the reproductive organs, like they have on the wall at the OBs office?
When I was pregnant with Christian Erin went to one of my appointments, she was just about 3 or so, and she asked me about the big picture on the wall that was in full detail, so I explained to her what all the body parts were. That seemed to satisfy her, I haven't gotten many more "what does this do?" questions since then, and she's 6 now.
I try to be very factual and simplistic with things like this. Like in response to "I wanna see yours," I might have said, "Oh, honey, it looks just like yours." Or "All girl parts look like that." I use the
There's a book and video called Once Upon a Potty that comes in boy and girl versions. The girl version has a little girl named Prudence who explains girl parts, right down to the little hole in her bottom where she goes poo poo. My daughter just happened to pronounce her name "Poohdense." Maybe your little girl would like that. My daughter loved the DVD. I was delighted that it came from the library and I had to give it back. If I had to see the hole in her little bottom one more time...really.
Please ignore my sentence fragment above. What do we need to do to get edit buttons on these comments? Geez.
First, do you have any girl pets? Maybe if it comes up again just show her that your pet has one. Or take a bath with her.
This might help http://www.the-clitoris.com/n_html/anat_d.htm
But really I think that just explaining that is the spot TT comes from for now will do.
If she is old enough to ask, then I would be honest in simple terms. I start right from the beginning with anatomically correct names with my children. The first time is the hardest when you are unprepared. Now you know she is curious so you can prepare a monalogue for her.;)
Thanks, everyone. What took me so off guard was the fact that she was so frightened by her discovery. We were trying to get her to not hurt herself as she was poking and stretching the whole area and yelling, "What is it? What is it? What is it?" We told her that it's where he pee pee comes from and that all girls have them, but she wasn't listening. I don't think she'll freak out (or I will freak out about her freaking out) next time!
Logan found mine the other day. I was in the bedroom getting dressed when he barged in, pointed and said pee pee. I have no clue how he even knew. Maybe he made the connection from a previous bathroom trip? Who knows.
Honestly, I don't see a problem with her wanting to see it. It is natural and her intentions are innocent. I remember when I saw my mothers I was more curious than anything.
No, it's not that it's a problem for her to see it, it's that she was nearly hysterical about the fact that she had a hole in her body and was digging her nails in and pulling at herself so hard we thought she was going to make herself bleed. She sees me naked all the time, and especially likes to rip off toilet paper to hand to me in the bathroom. Then she congratulates me for going pee pee on the potty and claps. I thought that I'd be able to find a picture of a baby (in one of the baby books) to show her that it's normal for babies to have a hole there. There's a good interactive picture on the kidshealth.org website that I found.
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Search while she's not freaking out (maybe during naptime or something) and have a site that will do already bookmarked, or check your libraryor online for a book to help explain things to younger kids.
I'm so glad mine were never even more than passingly interested in their parts.
However, Ryan used to run around naked after his bath, singing "Ringgold, ringgold" at the top of his lungs, because five golden rings was his favorite part of his favorite bedtime song. And yes, somewhere I do have this on tape.
- roachiesmom
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