Is bathing with ya kids abnormal?

and here in the uk parents can bath with their kids without being called pervs...and -SHOCK HORROR- it does no harm at all.

all this same sex nonsense just saddens me. i'm supposed to sexually discriminate against my own baby?

yup, the remnants of the puritanical.

Sbpit tje girl. You are correct she NO LONGER needs to see a grown man's dick. However, won't it be much less embarassing and easer to explain human growth and development and human sexuality later if she knows what a dick looks like. The bathing together needs to stop before she has very vivid memories and can associate them specifically with dad. Do you really believe that it would be wise to let your daughter grow up and never mention or know that boys and men have penises? You can manipulate it where that could happen.

And the son? You want to let him start puberty and let it be a total surprise? Isnt' that a bit mean to let the son be all in a dither when hair starts growing down there and the penis starts to develop into a adult size?


But,...then you run the risk of having your children talk about how puritanical their parnets were and with a girl, running the risk of the girl not even knowing that there is a penis. Imagine how angry a girl could be later because key information was deliberately hid from her.


And the boy. Make sure he sees no baby without a diaper on and tell him boys and girls are just the same except for the voice and women have boobs. So your son is humiliated in grade school when the boys laugh at him because he doesn't know about the vagina, or grown penises and what they can do. Yeah right deprive your children key information so they can learn it all at school from other kids and are teased beyond measure because they were so deliberately censured about what is most essential and that is their own sexuality.

People are losing it and going so far over to the puritanical side denying all sexuality to children while making them also be in the most sexualized culture of all time. It is bipolar at its worst.

And it is child neglect to allow a child to grow up with a warped sense of what a human body looks like and functions especiall the opposite gender after puberty. It is a failure of parental responsibility to force their to either not know what adults look like or find a porn magazine somewhere to look and their friends will be more than happy to find it for them.

You son will some day come here when he turnred 18 and he will ask in a new thread. Im a new member. I am 8 and 1/2 inches erect. Is there any way to make it grow anymore? All the dicks I have seen are in porn magazines and the shortest one there is nine inches.

I just joined a fitness center. Some of the odler men are gonig to the showers in the nude. Men must shrink because they aren't as big as those porn magazines are.

Your son will have low self esteem because he has been taught to be ashamed of his penis.

What the younger generation are forgetting is that children don't at that young of an age have the same sexual feelings and sexual relationships. The penis to little boys is for peeing. Except that it feels good to rub it, that is all they know.

Again repeating the broken record:

Nudity and Sexuality are related, but...nudity and sexuality are NOT the same thing.

i wouldn't go as far as calling it neglect but it's certainly imposing your own hang ups on your kids.

we're the snakes in the garden, force feeding them the apple.

Freddie is, as always, the voice of reason.

Excellent post. Couldn't add to it save to say, all over the world, dads and sons see each other naked all the time and, in some cases, spend their entire lives completely naked. There daughters get to see the entire show.

And you know what? They too don't equate nudity sex. The more we equate nudity with sex, the more ashamed of nudity we become to the point that at any time we see anyone nude, we think, 'SEX!!' and that, given some of the perfectly normal situations in which people might see each other nude, can cause some seriously damaging guilt.

and then any girl in a mini is looking for sex.
and any girl in a bikini was asking for it.

Where is it common for fathers and sons to spend their entire lives completely naked together? Nudist colonies? What an odd statement.

Freddie's post made no sense to me. I guess I didn't read it well enough. Was he saying that kids have to see their parents nude so they understand puberty and how their bodies function? There are books on this stuff you know. Most schools also have some type of health class and most kids can figure out how to do research on-line. Yes, it's great if parents get involved but you certainly can do that without being nude around your children.

The OP here wasn't even about nudity per se around children, it was about bathing them. Quite frankly, I don't see what the issue is. I don't get the same sex or opposite sex stuff. You bathe your children to get them clean and you monitor it in a way so they don't harm themselves by drowning or falling. I've seen fathers who are watching their daughters at the beach bring them into the men's shower area so they can get dressed. If the girls are in there, they are going to see naked men--whether it's their father or other men. What matters in these situations are intent. You manage these situations as parents as best you can with their safety as the number one objective.

I'm in the middle of the hysterical, "no never do it" crowd and the no boundaries, "all nude world" bunch--this is common sense parenting without the need for guilt. If you are operating in the best interests of your children and your intent to see them cleaned and safe--then you do what you have to, when you have to and get the job done. There isn't a specific age or a particular gender. If they are independent and you can trust them, then you step aside and let them do their thing. Simple.

My mother was an overly paranoid person about sexuality. With reason because of the sexual abuse that she endured as a child with family members. My mom raised me to be very aware that we are curious about the other gender and feared so much one of us doing any inappropriate things with the other than i wasnt allowed to bathe with my brothers (albiet they were much older than me)

Mom said that my brother was about 7 or 8 and was in swimming trunks while i was in a swimsuit to play in the bath with him at about 2 years old.

Let me say that my daughter and i enjoy baths and showers every now and again. Not only does it save time when we need to get cleaned in a hurry, but it is bonding time for us. We have always done a lot of water therapy during her course of autistic therapies. We turn on relaxing music and dim the lights and pour water on each others back and sing.

I remember bathing with my mom and scrubbing her back and really enjoying it (except for the water being way too hot!) and its no different with me and my daughter.

She is 6 years old and while we bathe far less often together than we used to, we are very comfortable naked around each other. She doesnt see my husband naked since the first time she went up and patted his penis concerned he had shit his pants (because of the bulge) when she was about 2.

Gradually we are seperating our baths as she doesnt require me to bathe with her much anymore. She does still need me to bathe her. My husband will help with bathtime if i have to work late or she got really dirty at school. He doesnt feel comfortable washing her girlie parts and hasnt for a couple of years so he bathes and towels her and lets her get dressed and i clean her there when i get home.

She is obviously still very comfortable with the bathing aspect with her dad. She does say that daddy can't see her pee pee because its her private parts.

We are very open about what our genitals are and what they look like. We talk about penis and vaginas. I showed her in the mirror the labia and vagina and how we have folds that need to be cleaned. Because of her extreme skin sensory issues she had a lot of problems letting me clean her. So showing her what her body parts looked like and being very matter-of-fact helped her get past that.

Every now and again she asks to have a mirror to look at her own genitals. I have no problem giving it to her. I was hung up on embarassment issues about my own genitals up until about a year ago. There is no way i'm going to let her go through the shame i went through!

Exactly MR, common sense parenting without focusing on the silly guilt stuff. You take care of what needs to be taken care of without putting your head in the sand.

Try thinking outside the "Western World" for a minute - there are still plenty of places round the world where clothing is not generally worn.

It depends what you mean by 'need'. I think it is much healthier to allow a child to see the naked human body (their own and those of other people) primarliy as a non-sexual thing. They can sexualise (some forms of) nudity themselves later in an appropriate context - but as children their naked body is not a sexual thing and neither (to a child) is mine, or anyone else's. It's not about the fact that child NEEDS TO SEE a naked body to understand puberty - but a child will be much more comfortable with his / her own body in an enviroment where Mum and Dad don't scream and grab a towel if the child comes in while they re showering and, even more so, in an environment where the child is not given the impression his/her own naked body is a shameful thing.

Well, yes - of course that is reasonable. Freddie and others are just using examples to show that nudity is not harmful or unnatural around children IF it is treated as a non-sexual thing. Some people are comfortable with it some are not. The OP (a good while back now) was asking about bathing with his kids. I think it is great when parents bath with their babies - I loved it. Babies love it. It's a bonding thing. Children, past infancy don't need an adult in the bath with them, or even hovering over them - but it is still not sexual for parents to be in the bath with their children and therefore it is up to each family to decide when that stops. I know when I was a kid we all used the bathroom at the same time and while I might not have been in the bath with my father it was OK if I needed to brush my teeth or have a quick wee while he was in the bath, and vice versa. In fact I would still be comfortable with that - but they have 3 bathrooms now so it just doesn't ever happen.

My parents being comfortable with their non sexual nudity has taught me to be the same. I'm very glad of it. I'm never embarassed at the doctors, nor changing on the beach, nor in communal showers. I see people that are, and I feel sorry for them.

I'm not unconvinced you Brits didn't also send us all your small cocked men either.

I think outside the Western world all the time. I'm still not aware of what places were being talked about. Educate us. Where are fathers and sons spending their entire lives completely naked together? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I just wanted to know where. I'm not aware of any groups of people or tribes that spend their entire lives naked, so I'm interested in learning something new here.

Wow, where the HELL did your issues come from? Why did you marry a pervert? Why was it OK for you to bathe with your infant son, but it would have been perverted for your husband to do the same with his infant daughter?

QFT, babe.

Why was it okay for you to bathe your sons and supervise them in the bath? I think you're a pervert because you can't come up with any reason for your opinion besides "that's just not right", and because you never left them alone in the bathroom while thinking it's perverted for a man to supervise or bathe with them. When I was strong enough to sit on my own, my mother still bathed me. She bathed me until she was sure I knew how to do it. We took plenty of baths together, and I loved it. When she stopped bathing with me, it was because she was a single mother, and there was always something more for her to do (like make supper, or iron my clothes).

You know, it's parents like some of the respondents to this thread, who cannot separate a bath from a sexual experience who result in adults with poor hygiene. I remember the day I discovered my little "niece" (who was six at the time) had never learned how to properly wash her vagina. That's ridiculous!

sadly can promise you that we didn't :(

Not to mention adolescents with crippling negative self-image, and adults with a crippling inability to form appropriate relationships with people of both genders.

Dysfunction: Pass it on!