Kids Are Going to Touch Genitals. Let's Not Get Too Freaked Out About It.
LatestAh, childhood. A time of youthful innocence, and the glory of first experiences. Your first day of school, your first BFFs, and your first schoolyard blow job. Record scratch.
Parents can get understandably wigged out about their 4- and 5-year-olds rubbing genitals together. Shock, anger, and disgust are typical reactions. But is this just the classic exploring and experimentation — remember “playing doctor”? — that many adults have forgotten about? Does nobody else remember the delights of rubbing one out on a Teddy Ruxpin? Anyone?
A preschool in Carson, CA. is under fire because a 5-year-old girl was caught with her mouth on the genitals of a 4-year-old boy. The school has since shuttered — although they’re saying it’s because their director is leaving — and the community is baffled and outraged.
Every time a “scandal” comes up about kids exploring themselves and each other — here are two recent examples — parents, teachers, administrators, governmental officials, and the media all freak out.
ABC News calls the allegations at Carson “shocking”. But is it really so shocking when young kids “play doctor”? You may or may not remember doing it, but there’s a good chance you did. Sex educator Joani Blank told us, “As far as I know, kids between the ages of four and preteen are exploring their bodies and the bodies of other kids. We have no idea to what extent, because most of them are smart enough to do it in private,” She says. “However, if they’re younger, they might not know enough to not do it publicly, and they need to be told to do so.”
Everyone’s angry at someone — the teachers, administrators, parents — everyone’s looking for someone to blame. Who was this terrible absentee teacher, and why weren’t they paying enough attention? What is happening in these kids’ homes that their children are so sexualized?
While neglectful teachers and abuse at home are definite possibilities in some situations, that’s not always the case. Often it’s just kids being kids, and not knowing it’s important to not play with themselves and others in public. They’re figuring things out for the first time. What feels good, bad, weird, wonderful — it’s all brand new. The children’s behavior isn’t deviant or freaky, it’s totally appropriate and natural.
Blank’s convinced that, in the situation in Carson, the person who’s acting the most inappropriately is Richard McCarthy, the father who claims his four-year-old son received oral sex from a 5-year-old girl.
“He told me about all the bad things that girl had been doing to him,” McCarthy said. “It went down in the classroom, it went down in the bathroom and it went down out on the playground.”
At least one other boy at the First Lutheran Church of Carson School says he also received oral sex from the same girl.
“The two boys that have been introduced to this feeling that they don’t know how to process are still looking for it, and trying to make it happen,” McCarthy said.
He goes on: