Really weird one - 2 and a half year old DD dry humping teddies

[Senparentingwoes]

Please help me. Dd is almost 2 and a half. Has been referred for neuro development assessment and speech and language assessment. Is non verbal at present amongst other things. My 5 year old dd is autistic so not my first rodeo.. however I am finding this really disturbing. I was heavily SA’d as a kid and it just feels so uncomfortable to me. I’m assuming it’s a self soothing thing, but she’s also grabbing at herself through her nappy throughout the day. How do I deal with this? I totally get it’s my issue but would also rather this not be something she is doing in front of others as she gets older because I worry about scary people and everywhere.

It’s definitely not a UTI, it’s been going on for about a year! 🙈 no thrush or rash either.

My daughter did this for a few months then it stopped. We would just distract her. Was just a stage for her

It's really not weird, I worked in a SEN school and probably 1/3 of the pupils there would stim regularly.

This sounds entirely developmentally normal and I think your sexual abuse is making you see it through a lens.

This age is where they realise it feels good. It's also a great age to start having the conversation about privacy and maybe play the pants song (nspcc). Otherwise, don't worry.

Also a good tool for now and the future is the traffic light tool from brook of sexual behaviours. It will help you to know what is normal and healthy for age and what isn't.

My mum was terrified she was going to have SS round when my brother was about 18 months as he was constantly humping everything!
It’s very normal for children to masturbate - it’s not sexual, they just know it feels nice. You should breezily redirect them to something else and say “that’s something we do in private”.

and as PP said, some kids do it as a stim. See it now and then at SEN sessions.

It's just self soothing, try to remember that she has no shame and no worries around this at all. It's a completely normal part of development. You can gently re-direct her if you're around other people, but if it's just you at bedtime then I wouldn't bother until she's a bit older. She's not going to understand the concept of 'private', especially not something being private from you.

It's normal for some girls, mine done it at that age and she always in my care, she normally done it when tired and went to sleep after, literally just grew out of it when her naps went. I went looking on MN at the time (10 years ago) and the SA, not normal comments made me feel awful. I spoke to my mum about it in the end, as I confused with such awful responses and she remembered me doing it and other aunts chipped in with similar stories.

None of this had happened and turned out she grew out of it.

Why would you make a comment like this when a quick bit of googling would tell you that it is in fact very normal?

One of my nieces used to do this as a toddler. I understand why you find it disturbing but I think it is normal really. It did turn out she was neurodiverse but I don't know if the two things were linked.