Toddler Q&A: My son touches his genitals
Q: My son has started touching his genitals. How can I get him to stop doing this in public without giving him hangs-ups about his body?
A:Sheryl answers: Children are natural-born explorers. They love to explore their own bodies (and sometimes mom’s and dad’s as well). They enjoy the feeling of power and pleasure that this brings. At first they explore through the mouth. They’ll put everything in their mouths, from toys to toes.
A common time for children to explore their genitals is when the nappy comes off or during toilet training time. This too gives much pleasure. The message we want to give our children is that your body is pleasurable. We don’t want to cause any shame or embarrassment around this normal behaviour. However, we also don’t want to exacerbate it. In light of this, we allow the exploration but we need to set limits around it.
So how do you deal with it? Just as you do with nose picking: “You are allowed to pick your nose, son, but you use a tissue and do it in private.” Children are allowed to touch their private parts, but only in a private place. The message you are giving your children is that “your body is your own and it is private”.
This is also an important skill for the prevention of any physical or sexual abuse. Even changing a nappy can then be done in private.
But what happens if your child’s hands are always down below? If this is the case, you can gently remove his hand from his genitals, without saying a word. Should this continue, again you treat it like picking one’s nose. You remove the child to a private place and say: “You are welcome to touch your private parts, but you must do so in private. So this is a private place, come back to the kitchen when you are done.” Most pre-schoolers don’t like to be alone, so they will come back quite quickly and will get the message.
You need to do this with no shame or blame. If your child is masturbating, you take the same approach, but you might need to give the masturbation a name. Some parents have called it “horsie”; others have called it “rubbing”. You will need to seek professional help if it goes on for longer than three months, since these behaviours quickly become a habit and are hard to break. Professional help will assist in understanding underlying difficulties that are being acted out.
Lastly, I often notice that boys and girls are treated differently on this issue. For some reason, parents are less concerned when the little boys masturbate, but become horrified when little girls do. It is important to apply the same expectations to boys and girls in this area. YB