At the moment, my children (son aged 4 years and daughter aged 2 and a bit years) see me naked in the mornings as I'm getting showered and dressed.
I've started to wonder at what point should I be covering up. The general consensus at work was that when my son starts school I should be more careful with my nakedness because he'll tell everyone else and it may become an issue. (Not sure if I've mentioned the Barbie story, but he said to me the other week "Mum, you look just like Barbie apart from you've got nipples"!!).
I do own a bath robe / dressing gown / house coat (whatever you want to call it!) but I rarely wear it. I only wear my house coat in the house when I'm cold, hence why I would call it a house coat. I don't tend to wear it when I'm getting dressed.
Let me stress here that I don't walk about naked for long, and it's only in the mornings as I go from the shower to my bedroom to get dressed. So we're talking all of 15 minutes or so.
I'm really self-conscious about my body and part of my reason to not cover up was to try and teach the kids that they should accept their body and not be ashamed of it. If they ask me questions, then I try and answer them as best as I can and for the most part we've been calling body parts by their proper names (although we've been using "front bottom" instead of the v-word!).
My son has stripped off a couple of times whilst in our house during the day, and once or twice it's been when my friends have been round. The other male 4 year old joined in and the two of them were jumping around like lunatics on the trampoline, whilst the 4 year old girls looked on in disgust!! But that's just boys, right?
I'm thinking now is also a good time to start talking to them about "The Underwear Rule". The statistics are frightening... 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused. My son has absolutely no stranger danger and he's super confident about talking to anyone and everyone when we're out and about. I don't want to scare him or affect his confidence either... what's the best approach for these chats??
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I've recently been worrying about stranger danger too. My littlest is only 2 but when someone (a stranger) says hello to her / us when we're out and about and they start chatting to N, I'm encouraging N to say hello... which is a total contradiction of what I should be teaching her!
ReplyDeleteI really want to teach her not to talk to strangers but then if someone casually chats, say in the supermarket, then that really is a stranger and would I appear rude?
My mind is fluff thinking about it! Now the naked issue, I've not even thought about that.. Hope you find the answers and please share x
I would take the lead from them. I've got 2 children, an 8 year old boy and a 13 year old girl. While we don't walk about the house naked we obviously are while getting dressed in our bedroom or showering. My hubby is worried about being in the nude in front of our daughter so he always turns his back if she walks in but I feel if they don't feel comfortable then they can come back in a minute to speak to us when we are dressed. As my daughter is getting older she does tend to do that now but its been her choice. As for stranger danger I've always told my 2 that its ok to speak to strangers if they were with me but not to if they were on their own. Hope that helps. Btw love the blog and good luck with the house move! Lorri
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