My Five Year Old Has Taken to Screaming a Concerning Phrase in Public
Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
Over the last few years, I’ve had ongoing conversations with my kids about personal boundaries and appropriate touching. It didn’t seem like they were taking much away from these discussions, but I figured that it would click for them at some point.
I guess it’s finally clicked for my daughter (now 5) because now she won’t shut up about people/things touching her butt. Like, if my hand lightly grazes her butt while I’m trying to help her into her bathing suit, she yells, “Mama, you touched my private part!” Another time, her cousin tossed a wiffle ball into the chair she was sitting in, and she yelled, “[Cousin] touched my private part!” because the ball he’d thrown touched her butt.
For what it’s worth, I don’t have any reason to believe anything nefarious has happened to her. I’ve asked about it gently in a calm moment and she said that nobody touched her in the way we talked about. Also, she doesn’t seem upset when something touches her butt. If anything, she thinks it’s funny. I don’t want to shut down this behavior entirely, because I want her to feel comfortable talking to me if, God forbid, she was being abused. But I also need her to stop screaming about private parts in the Walmart changing room. How do we handle this?
—No Butts About It
Dear No Butts,
Your daughter’s statements—and watching your reaction to them—is her way of figuring out what’s appropriate and what isn’t. You can start being extra considerate about how you react and what you say right after she makes one of her moments. You can correct her with words to explain that she doesn’t need to raise the alarm unless she’s uncomfortable. You can also work on reacting to her statements in a neutral way—like they are kind of boring, and not funny—which might make it less interesting for her to yell.
But don’t worry too much about course-correcting her. While your daughter’s miscalculations of what counts as inappropriate touching may be embarrassing and even disruptive, this is a case where her over-indexing is so, so much better than under-indexing. I’d be inclined to just grin and bear it (and calmly inform any store employees who come check on you that, yes, everything is fine). Really doubling down to correct her might just not be worth getting it wrong. It also doesn’t sound to me like she’s gotten all the way to “Boy Who Cried Wolf” levels (that story was a favorite in our house when the kids started testing out fibbing).
Of course, this isn’t the end of the conversation about boundaries, and inappropriate touching. This is just phase one. As your kids get older, you’ll have to keep having versions of the talk on this subject with a little more understanding from their side each time. They’ll likely have things “click” again and only start raising alarms when actually necessary. Good luck at Walmart!
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Dear Care and Feeding,
My 10 year old daughter Elizabeth is very shy. She has a friend Owen who she’s very close with. Owen has been there for Elizabeth during some very tough times in her life. Though we’ve tried, Elizabeth has found it very difficult to make new friends. Owen’s family is moving at the end of the summer, with a week before school starts. Owen is the more outgoing of the two, but is still very shy. Elizabeth is devastated. We live in Connecticut, he’s moving to Maine, so about 6 hours away. Far enough away that meeting up regularly is difficult. Elizabeth has a phone which she primarily uses to contact her father and I when coming home from school, or to talk to Owen. As I said we’ve been trying to get her to branch out and make new friends for ages. She’s worried now that her peers will just see her as the really quiet girl with glasses who sits in the corner and that trying to branch out now will be too much.
—Moving
Dear Moving,
Friends moving away is a big part of life and your daughter is just getting an early and heavy dose of it. First, make sure your daughter understands that Owen’s departure is not his demise. While it sounds like they’ll stay in touch with text, work with Owen’s parents to set up a calendar of physical visits and video calls that both families really try to stick to. Having firm dates to look forward to will keep their relationship from fizzling and give your daughter something to count on. Would the two of them attending the same summer camp or a winter break camp be an option? Put that on the calendar, too.
That said, Owen can’t be the last friend she makes! You’re right to see his reduced proximity is a good opportunity for her to make new friends. In my experience, “making friends” is more often something that just kind of happens, and not something that people set out to do intentionally. Figure out what your daughter is interested in and find organized activities that will get her doing those things in a physical space (Roblox does NOT count) with other kids who do those things, too. Branch beyond her usual social circle and look for activities outside of school. You can also do some work to reach out to other parents of kids in her classes and activities. Create opportunities for them to be in the same room and interact. You don’t need to force friendships, but you can create the circumstances to foment them.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
For the past month my 5 year old has been terrified of going to bed because of her newly developed fear of the dark. My niece went through a similar phase, and what helped her then was rationally explaining that monsters aren’t real. Whenever she would ask my sister to check for monsters in her room she would, explaining that since monsters aren’t real there isn’t any harm in checking. It also helped her to have a nightlight that helped her see that. My sister gave me the night light, since my niece has long outgrown her fear. But the nightlight isn’t helping my daughter, because she has really high prescription glasses and the world is a blur for her without them. Even with the light on she sees a giant blur and her imagination creates monsters. Her glasses are right next to her bed but the action of putting them on and taking them off means she gets no sleep. And her lack of sleep makes her miserable and makes all of us miserable too. What can we do?
—Night Light’s No Help
Dear Night Light,
I assume you’ve already looked into some kind of indestructible eyeglasses that she could sleep in or you wouldn’t have written in. If not, start there! (I’m kidding—unless you find some). Otherwise, perhaps there are other senses besides sight that you can encourage her to use to know that there are absolutely no monsters in the dark. Does she smell any monsters? Can she hear any? Nope! Back to bed. She can also use her tactile senses to feel a favorite stuffed animal; maybe even one that can see in the dark and would surely tell her if there were any monsters around.
Do you know where this fear started? How did she find out about monsters? It would be good to chase that down to at least understand what she’s actually imagining when it’s dark and she’s scared. From there you can move on to some of the basic books and movies that help kids understand that monsters are made up. For movies, Monster’s Inc. has mostly lovable monsters that can make them seem not-so-scary. Lilo and Stitch has monstrous aliens that might be a good jumping off point for a conversation about the difference between real life and cartoons. Book-wise, I grew up on There’s a Nightmare in my Closet by Mercer Mayer; its modern-day equivalent How I Met My Monster by Amanda Noll was a hit with our kids. Grab a bunch of monster books from the library and see what hits. Normalize monsters!
—Greg
My wife and I have four kids, (2, 6, 9, and 11). She’s a great mom, and the kids love her. She’s also a huge perfectionist, which stems from constant criticism from her parents all throughout her life. She’s been in therapy as long as I’ve known her and is doing great, except for one problem. We have all of our kids (except the youngest) do chores, but sometimes my wife gets frustrated at the quality of the housework my kids are doing, and then she just takes over herself. I think it’s important for the kids to feel pride in their work and that’s impossible if she steps in and does everything for them. What can I do?