Bath time revisited

Dear Amy: I am still in shock over your heavy-handed response to “A Concerned Granny.” An 18-yearold girl bathes with 2- and 3year-old boys and you are criminalizing it?

Your suggestion that the children are so at risk that Child Protective Services should be called seems so over the top to me that I am truly disturbed.

I’ll be honest, I’m influenced by European sensibilities (where I lived for many years), where on many public beaches 1- and 2-year-olds run naked and nobody is concerned about it, least of all the parents.

Sexualizing everyday bathing and criminalizing what may be poor judgment just seems unnecessary to me, and I hope your suggestions don’t end up traumatizing this girl.

Concerned

Dear Concerned: Many readers agreed with you, though your comparison with nudity on public beaches doesn’t quite fit this situation (at least in my mind).

It is not the little boys’ nudity that worried me, but the teenager bathing with them in a (presumably) very small and confined space. As “A Concerned Granny” pointed out, if the genders had been reversed and this teenager had been a male and the children female, someone would have called the police.

I think this shows strange and very poor judgment, but I agree that my reaction is also partially a reflection of my own cultural sensibility (in my one visit to a European nude beach, I wore a turtleneck).

In my response I said the grandmother should discuss this with the teen. I said that this situation had many red flags and that if this Concerned Granny talked with the teen and continued to be worried, she should call CPS. A caseworker could make a determination about whether this Granny — and I — are justified in our reaction.