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The Adventure Down Under – When Your Preschooler Finds His Private Parts
Posted by Jeff on February 27, 2008 154 views Comments (View Comments)Nope it ain’t Australia! So right now, this week, our son who’s 3 1/2 is telling my wife at bedtime that his penis feels funny (is tingly, hurts, feels different, etc. – Boo sure had a lot of sayings about this already). Yikes! So what does that mean? Just a year ago I was teaching him about the (real) birds and the bees and now he’s noticing his manhood and asking about why it gets the way it does. Oh boy. What does a Dad say to a 3 1/2 year old?
I’ve noticed myself saying, “It’s ok, that is natural”, or “the scientific answer is…blood flow”, or I just say, “So what about school, what did you do there today?” and bypass the question. How many other Dads (or moms) are currently going through this phase in your son’s or daughter’s life right now? I think I’m going to ask the other Dads in Boo’s daycare class about this and see if this is happening to them yet, and if so, what the Hell they are doing about it!
It’s funny I did a quick Google search tonight on “3yr old boy and penis” and bam, 235,000 results. Of course only about 10 are any good. So the first result was from a Yahoo! Answers Malaysia site.
Some of the answers were great information and I’ll get to those, but a few were down right hysterical!
The question posed on Yahoo Answers was:
My 3 year old son is playing with his penis these days…..resulting in erection?
and the funny replies were:
“perfectly normal…he will stop when he’s about eighty”
“yeah…. you are going to need to get that removed asap”
But in all seriousness, our little boys are just exploring the uncharted waters and figuring out what they are made up of. “This thing that hangs between my legs, and Daddy has one, gets silly feeling when I touch it”. Why would they stop!?
But one thing to keep in mind, remind him that if he’s going to touch “it” to do so only in private.
“You might want to talk to him about his body now; that whole good touch bad touch thing and remind him that when he touches himself he should try to do it in private.”
One thing that freaks me out is that ever since Boo started potty training at school (daycare) he’s been saying penis. Ok that is that correct term, but from a 3 1/2 year old it just sounds weird.
But another answer on yahoo was:
“When you talk about his body, use normal vocabulary (penis, vagina) but if your already using certain terms as part as your toilet training, continue to use them, however, you’ll have to teach him the correct terms later on. Don’t be embarrassed when talking to your child about his genitals; they’re simply part of his body”
That is a very good point. There are probably over 100 names for the male genitals, but there is only one medically correct term and that is penis.
So to conclude this long post, I guess just go with the flow. If your son or daughter is exploring too much check with your peditrician.
