Let's pretend my penis is a jellyfish!

Greetings from Ted Bundy land!

And Green River Killer land.

And the beautiful pacific northwest where the most prolific serial killers are spawned and we tend to take those things really, really seriously while we scratch our heads and wonder why.........

So... um..... er.... yeah...... uh.....

Having spent a chunk of the day watching the Discovery channel shows about volcanos our dry off time tonight centered on "pretend your belly is the center of the earth and you have a belly ache and your mouth is the top of the mountain and everything is being pushed up towards the top of the mountain and you have to vomit and well, that's kind of like a volcano."

Add promises of a field trip to Mt. St. Helens and a super cool excursion through the lava tubes.

Breathe easier thinking vomit and volcanos are the only thing you'll have to deal with tonight.....

And breathe easier knowing there are people who understand Mo's circumstances who know how to keep me from being scared.

Sometimes a jellyfish is just a jellyfish....heeeheheehehehehehehe.....ahem....

<snortle>

Ha!

When you end your day thanking your lucky stars that you live near an active volacno......

By the way, is St Helens still smoking?

(a quick google search says it is, indeed!)

Boomer--

You and Mo and creativity make perfect sense.

On the other hand, Pat Robertson is going to blame you, personally, when Mount St. Helene's lets go.

Doesn't matter what you say
He'd blame you anyway.

So there!

Hold your dominion.

Glad to hear Mo is on to bigger and better things....

You can certainly expect variations of the jellyfish at some time, but it's likely just about learning what's appropriate / not appropriate, so keep in mind it's normal and it is a penis (not those silly names some parents ascribe as dlowan mentioned) and he's proud of it. No big deal.

Pretty sure I've told the story of baby cub resting on my boobs in the grocery store as I pushed him along in the cart. Kept touching, squeezing, laying his head on them if I reached to put something in the cart. He said loudly what great pillows they are... Kids do say the darndest things.

uh honey.... that was me... you're blocking.

Why do I believe you.......

yeah. I too was also in the " oh my god" shocked responce because, in my mind, I pictured you two playing by the bathtub and him almost whispering the ' kiss the jellyfish' as if he was almost embarassed, and questioning the request..
But now, it makes perfect sense.
Someone said before, your hesitation in your responce was probally a perfet thing to do. It wasnt saying " hey your nasty/or bad/ or gross"
It was a realistic responce that he would get from anyone. A discussion of private parts, no matter what age, makes someone hestitate a bit.. because they ARE private parts. He learned that with you.. wich is the safest place TO learn it. ;-)
But I wont beat the subject to death.. It seems like you have come to a comfortable resolve.

because he will never be weaned..

boomer - I don't know mo's background.

Is there a specific thread where you have told his story?

I don't know, I've been thinking about what you said that "he has his whole life to dry himself off"

again, I plead ignorance, but 2 questions.

1. When do you let the child make up his/her mind he/she is ready to take on a new task, and when does the parent give him a little push and say something like "you're growing up, it's time for you to start drying yourself off".

2. When does bathtime (for example) stop being playing with Mr. Knee or my elbow is a whale or whatever, and start becoming a time to wash and dry yourself?

I just don't know about some of this...I was raised in a really f*cked up family, which I won't go into, but, well, this whole thing just makes me feel icky inside. No matter how I say this, it's going to come out wrong, so I'll just dive in, please consider my ignorance....

If mo understands that he pretends his knee is Mr. Twiddles, but he really know it's his knee, then he must know his penis, no matter what he's calling it, is really his penis. He knows his penis is something he goes to the bathroom with, and (here I'm speculating) he know he doesn't go to the bathroom in public, or right in front of people, because going to the bathroom is a private thing, and so, his penis is a private thing.
He also goes to the bathroom using his butt, and I bet he doesn't go around showing everyone is butt in public either.

Not wanting for your child to have shame of a body part is one thing, teaching privacy is another.

Re the sexual stuff. I'm sure you know this, but children much younger than your son have sexual feelings.
The reason all this has been on my mind is that last night I was putting away albums and there was a picture of me when I was just a tad older than mo, kindergarden, when I was the flower girl in my cousins wedding.

One of the clearest memories I have of that day was sitting on the lap of one of the groomsmen, who was quite drunk. He was paying all kinds of attention to me, I was eating food off his plate, cuddling in his arms, smelling the alcohol and cigarettes on his breath, feeling his 5 o'clock shadow, and being incredibly attracted to him, in a sexual way. I had no idea what sex was, but I knew I wanted to stay right where I was on his lap all night.

My mother came by and whisked me off, telling me not to go near him, so something must have been obvious. All I remember is being really mad I couldn't go back and sit on the lap of this "boyfriend"

When I looked at the picture of me that day, 5 years old, it was hard to reconcile those feelings in a picutre of a little girl.

All I'm saying is, mo does have sexual feelings. Maybe he was testing a "theory" he was coming up with about how this part of his body seems different. Maybe when you hesitated in wanting to play with him that way you validated for him that yes, this body part is different from my knee.

Perhaps his look of confusion was not totally, 'why doesn't mom want to play with my jellyfish', but "I knew she wouldn't want to, but I'm not completely sure why"

Also, I guess I'm sorta confused about the whole matter as far as this....

When he asked you that question, what would mo's response have been if you just directly said, without freaking out or whatever. "no, that's your penis, and it's one of your private parts that you don't let just anyone touch." and then just continued about your business?

I just have a feeling he already knows this, and was just checking it out....

But, what do I know?

Wow.

As the parent of a kid who is just a couple of months older than Mo, this is interesting reading. Everything Boomer is saying I get, completely, and then I see some takes on it and it's just whaaa...???! If I back up and think about it, I understand it, I guess, it's just so completely removed from my reality of raising a 4 11/12ths-yr-old.

For one thing, there seems to be an assumed dichotomy between sexual/ non-sexual. I can acknowledge that my daughter is sexual without getting ooky about it if she expresses it in some mild, incidental way. She holds all of herself in rather high regard, and if she says, for example, "I like my vagina!", I won't begin a lecture about how it's private and I won't begin a lecture on how, yes, she has to value her yoni (or whatever), I'll just smile pretty much the same way as if she says "I like my toesies!"

For another, I think "what I do with mom in the privacy of our own home" is much, much different from the concept of "public". I wipe my kid's butt when she poops, but she's not going to ask some stranger to do that. I see her naked all the time, but she knows not to run around naked in public. There are things you only do on your own; things you do only with parents (for a while anyway, probably ends at some age -- but that age is not 4); and things you do only in public. They're all separate categories.

I very much identify with the "why rush it?" aspect Boomer mentions. I think the silliness and games are wonderful and valuable and of limited duration, and that there's nothing harmful about them, at all. Quite the contrary.

So in terms of this:



A mom is not "just anyone". It doesn't work to say that "nobody should touch your penis, ever" for a few reasons; it implies that there is something wrong with it, makes it difficult in terms of being examined by a doctor, etc.

It's also just completely out of character (hard to explain), if you are being silly and goofy and playing and then all of a sudden you're not mama jellyfish anymore, your're Mama, and you're saying this all seriously, it's a Big Deal. It's not casual.

The pretending vs. real stuff is another thing. Of course he understands that his penis is actually his penis. (Hard to explain!!!) Sozlet and I will have whole long extended conversations in character. Like, the other day after her bath (baths, again), we played that she was a mermaid and when she dried off she turned into a girl, and I introduced her to the land world. (Her discoveries, by the way, included hey, I have feet, and hey, I have a vagina! This led to a discussion of how mermaids pee, we weren't sure.)

Anyway, the next hour or two were me showing her around the house, explaining how various things worked, and asking her questions about life as a mermaid. Of course she understood that she was really a girl.

So say that when she "discovered" her vagina she asked me to touch it. If I broke character and went into the whole "privacy" thing then it would have been weird and had "IMPORTANT!!!" hovering over it in flashing neon letters. If I'd not really reacted, or changed the subject, or whatever, that would give a message itself but in a more subtle manner.

(Ooh, this is so much harder to explain than I thought it would be when I started typing!!!)

By the way, if this seemed to be an issue, coming up in a lot of different ways, I would file it and then bring it up to discuss more seriously at some point.

Dlowan and I have talked about the difficulty of giving kids the info they need without unnecessarily scaring them/ making them paranoid. A very tough balance.

If people look at the first post, it wasn't Mom that was momma jellyfish - he was talking about his own hands.

Hmmm, believe it or not, I think I do understand some of what you're saying Soz....This is all pretty interesting to me.....kids and all.

couple things, and again I don't know mo's background, but, he and your girl at not 4, they are really more like 5, and alot of stuff happens in that year I'm sure.

So, I'm just wondering what is age appropriate at 4 is not age appropriate at 4 and 9 months or 4 and 11 months. Basically 5.

I'm rambling here, but I'm just remembering various stuff in life. May not be true in this case, but I'm just gonna put it out there.

I know there no magic time when a kid is supposed to learn some something...honest to God, when I was in 5th grade, I could read at a high school graduate level, but did not know how to tie my own shoes. I knew more about finance than most adults at 16, but that was finally the year I taught myself to swim.

My sister was the last of the kids, my mother was 40 when she had her, which for that time was considered old to have a baby. I was 5 at the time.
My mother was never very attentive to her children, and with sis she is was sort of like, it doesn't matter if she grows up, there's these other kids around, they'll teach her what to do.

Funny, she was the one who learned to walk when she was 9 months old.
Otherwise though, this was the daughter who sleept in a crib, and sucked a pacifier until she herself turned 5 and went to kindergarden.
It was only there that she learned that none of the other kids did this.
She stopped sucking a pacifier and finally moved into the bedroom with the other girls, but to this day, and now she 41, it's like she still wishes she slept in a crib.
Of course there were so many other things involved with this, so I'm making no comparisons, but it makes me wonder about this.....At every stage of our lives, there are changes and challenges and things we are puzzled about, and some stuff we just never understand, but in order to live happily in society and in our private lives we accept as part of life.
Sure any child will be puzzled as to why all of a sudden (at least it seems sudden to them) I can't suck on Mom's breast, or call my penis a jellyfish, or learn not to yell loudly in most places. But, well, ya know, that days just got to come, and saying a kids got the rest of his life to do this eventually just doesn't cut it.
Now my younger sister does act of course as an adult, and everything that goes with it, but that transition just seemed harder for her, maybe a little bit because there wasn't someone to say ' this is how you do it now, you're growing up.'

I'm really off subject maybe, not directed at anyone, but I'm not sure we aren't doing children a dis-service by keeping them completely innocent for so long. Growing up is confusing, but maybe it's more confusing the longer you wait, past a certain point.

Anyway, all this is moot since we haven't heard back in from boomer yet.

boomer, I'm sure you're a great mom, I just can't stop asking questions, never have been.

He was the baby jellyfish, her hands were mommy and daddy:

Memories..

the only time either of my parents spanked me, ever ever, was when we were living in New York City and I got home from school early for some reason and the door was locked.
So, eight year old I-can-take-care-of-this-person that I was, I went down the elevator and asked the doorman to let me in, which he did and left, no big deal.

Was I surprised when my mother arrived home from the grocery store shortly after and was lividly furious and spanked me. I had no clue what was so terrible about my doing that. Being a slow learner, not at that point being exposed to violent tv or movies or books, and alucky girl, I had no clue for years later either. However, my mother did handle it poorly that day, as I really didn't get it, that strangers can be dangerous. (I know, doh, but...) I still remember my total confusion.

Oh hi Chai, hadn't seen you there...

Glad some of it made sense!

I think we agree on basic principles, more about where the line is and maybe some of the definition of "innocent."

For the line, you'd agree that there wouldn't be any good reason to not dry off a 1-year-old, say, right? 4 or 5 seems arbitrary -- a 1-year-old is sexual, too. An infant is.

What happens at 4 or 5 that makes it no longer OK?

Drying-off time is a wonderful huggy, affectionate time -- they're wet, they're cold, you wrap the nice warm dry towel around 'em and hug them (that's how I dry her, anyway) and it seems to be a prime communication time. It's like, why let them sit on your lap, they'll have to stop sometime. Sure, but why NOW? And especially, if you do stop it forcibly now, what will the effects be?

In terms of "innocent", not sure what you mean. In fact, rather than guessing (and also 'cause I need to go), I'll just ask, what do you mean?

(Just saw Osso's, definitely agree that the information needs to be imparted -- sozlet knows to not open the door for anyone we don't know, to not let ANYONE do anything that makes her uncomfortable, to look for a mom if she gets lost [that one's from Bill's sister, my old housemate] [though via Bill], etc., etc. Fairy tales are really good for this stuff too, sounds weird, but really.)

No, soz, she said his hands.