Little Bean can’t talk yet (unless you count enthusiastic “dadda dadda dad!” as talking, and I don’t, because she can’t say “mum”. Until then I have selective deafness). She does understand quite a lot of words though and it’s only a matter of time before she starts that delightful process of wanting to name everything in her environment.
Eyes and ears and mouth and nose will be pretty easy words to teach her. And bellybutton and knees.
It gets a little tricker in between there though.
I strongly believe that all children need to know how to speak about their bodies using the proper words, for self-protection, as well as creating a healthy self-image free of shame and the need to point and giggle at art galleries. And clearly we can’t rely on schools to take over the work of teaching young folk what’s what and what shouldn’t go where at the moment and why. Today’s Sunday Age headline Sex Ed For 10 Year Olds is meant to be provocative I suppose but personally I think at a time when the sexualisation of children starts earlier and earlier and adolescent cases of chlamydia are at epidemic proportions, starting at 10 months is more sensible. Ten year olds can probably learn more about sex from their Bratz dolls than they would in sex ed classes.
So education begins at home. But there is the problem of language. If Bean was a boy, we’d have the very simple and respectable word penis to rely on. And at times that seemed too clinical, there’d be the innocuous willy. And older boys have the luxury of great choice: the widely used and utilitarian dick or the proudly masculine cock being two of the more popular options. Instead, I have a daughter, and so I must choose between the anatomically correct (since we’d be referring to her external genitalia) vulva or the more widely used and recognised vagina. For more irreverent moments, we’re left with the archaic and confusing fanny, the asexual and misleading front-bottom or even one anti-sexual and horrifying suggestion I heard: no-no parts. When she’s grown, it’s porn terms like pussy or the misppropriated, negatively-weighted cunt. (Hey, if James McAvoy can say it in Atonement I can say it here. And at home. And I do.)
I did toy with the idea of reclaiming the c-word in the most vital way by giving it to my daughter.
But I live in the real world where little Isabella returning home from a playdate at our house saying ‘mummy, guess what word I learned today…’ wouldn’t only spell the end of playdates at our house but lead to a lifetime of being whispered about in the local supermarket queue. And not just because I have more than 12 items in my basket.
So, vagina it is. Unless the three of you can think of a better alternative.
This just made me laugh! We always went with plain old ‘vagina’ for our girl, which she began saying as ‘gina’ which has sort of stuck. I also firmly believe that children should know the proper names for all of their body parts! Now that she’s older though, we’ve had interesting discussions about the vulva and the vagina and the labia and all of that – my philosophy is to answer all questions with honesty and openness. And now that she has a little brother, there’s been discussions about the scrotum and the testicles and the balls and the penis… omg things get interesting around here!
‘Gina’ seems it would work, though it’s a knotty n very annoying problem – i have only boys so it never came up (though other things did, lol). The problem is just the same in adult intimate life, for me anyway. I’m not comfortable with any of the available terms when ‘my’ is prefixed, and i feel i should be. This question doesn’t make me laugh, it makes me grit my teeth n roll my eyes.
I lurve the thought of reclaiming the c-word, but society is unforgiving (and unforgetting). I was in what i thought was a pretty sensible n understanding crowd, who turned wary n judgmental cos a little boy – about nine years old iirc – knew details about pregnancy beyond the baby-in-tummy basics. He knew morning sickness was usually only in the first three months, for example. And he’d bring the subject up when it wasn’t in the conversation.
I supposed he must have had a cousin or family friend or someone whose pregnancy had led to his questions being openly answered – as we all approved of doing – and naturally, it being a fascinating subject, he was fascinated. But still the parents were ‘wondered about’. Sad.
That is funny. I have boys and do strive to teach them the correct terms. However I seem to be one of the only moms around here that do that so when my boys proudly speak of their penis none of the other children have any idea what they are talking about. The mothers gasp. And when their friends mention their willies, wing-wangs, unh-uhs or tallywackers my boys look at them like they are cavemen. It doesn’t help that when my middle child had to go to the urologist the educated gentleman told my child he had a peeshooter. What is that?
Well, you’re right. There were three comments. Until this one.
I know I’ll have to use the term eventually, but I’m still not 100% comfortable rubbing nappy-rash cream on certain parts of my little girl, so I know I have issues. Until then, I just talk to her about her “privates”.
Hey, isn’t there an age which kids reach where they can use different words to refer to the same thing? Until then, it must be confusing for them when every parent picks a different term.
‘An age which kids reach where they can use different words to refer to the same thing’ – I don’t think we need keep our language as simple for tiny tots as some advice books would have us believe. For example, in this household, little bruv was (from birth) used to hearing big bruv referred to as ‘darling’, ‘precious’, ‘little man’, ‘dumpling’, ‘pumpkin’, ‘pigeon’, and probably various other terms as well as his actual name. I don’t remember little bruv ever being confused by it. Another example: i say ‘sofa’ and my husband says ‘settee’, but the babies coped with our respective comments when they were pulling themselves up from crawling to surf along the edge of said piece of furniture.
It’s a bit like family rules, too – we’ve always made it explicit that different houses have different rules for *some* things. Hitting is never acceptable, but climbing on the back of the sofa (that sofa again) was ok in our house but not in our friends, who had a sofa more liable to tip over. As long as it’s made clear, kids cope. I don’t mean that as a sarcastic put-down – this has come out more serious than i feel about the topic. It just illustrates perfectly that children can understand (and survive) about 500% more than people suppose, IF it’s put into words.
It was just something I read in a book called The Tipping Point that described some of the principles of child psychology used in making kids TV. It is the basis of why Big Bird (who is a big bird) is not called Frank. No idea how sound the theory is, but it is clearly influential.
Yoni
You know, Andrew, that’s interesting. I’ll have to read that book. I’ve always noticed, with amusement, that the characters in children’s books are named according to what they “are,” hence you’ll read: “One day Cow decided to visit her friend, Duck. But Duck wasn’t home, so Cow thought she’d go see her other friend, Sheep.” I’ve wondered at this.
Reading through your blog and it’s great. My 2 yo daughter plays with her vulva AND vagina
more than I would like and I do try use the anatomically correct name when discussing. We nick name her `flossy’ which some european friends have informed is another slang term for girls genitalia. We nick name her this because her proper name has similar sounds. So NOW we have this awful practice of saying `flossy don’t play with your flossy ‘ Oh the complexity!
Why can’t you call a vulva a vulva instead of mislabeling it as “vagina”? Just because vagina is more widely used doesn’t make it anymore correct or any less ignorant. People can talk in an intelligent manner. Reducing women to just a vagina and not recognizing proper terms is demeaning to women. I once heard one of my teen girl friends ask “What’s a vulva?” (she didn’t know what vulva means. how sad). Can you imagine a grown man asking what “penis” means? There are many grown women (that’s right) out there who don’t even know about their own anatomy, and this leads to problems in sexuality. Sexual education needs to start with the right terms. I think people should be taught the correct terms once they are old enough to understand. I think it’s okay to use cutesy nicknames as long as they know you are talking about a vulva or vagina.
*sarcasm* Oh, since being anatomically correct doesn’t matter, let’s call a “penis” a “stomach” and let’s call the “uterus” the “lung”. It’s like calling your “lips” as your “throat”. Words don’t have specific meanings or proper uses. *sarcasm*