To just call a fanny a fanny?

[teafortoads]

Apologies if this has been done before/to death but i am new to this Mumsnet Lark (posting not lurking, I have happily lurked for years). What on earth word do you give to your toddler to describe their girl parts? I have and always will, have a fanny, where as I am aware of friends who have foofs, fairies (could cause some confusion when you go to put the fairy on top of the Christmas tree) lady gardens vulvas and so on. I see no reason to pretty things up, and always arrive back at good old trusty fanny in the end having massively overthunk things. When DD2 is a little bit older I will furnish her with all the proper words, but are fanny and willie (not that she will encounter any of THOSE until she is at least 40 given that I am a single Mum and our house is happily a man free zone nowadays, and boyfriends will not be permitted until she is at least 40) acceptable? Is fanny a bit coarse?

Could the feminine of willy be Willa ? For toddlers I mean ?

Crotch in our house for boys and girls. Penis for boys and between you legs for girls. I had used vulva/ vagina but have decided that crotch was better as it covers both sexes.

People have already said it but it's the same as calling your axilla your armpit, just a pet name for a part of you body, I think you'd sound like a knob going round using anatomically correct names for all of your body parts. If I heard someone telling a child in a public lop to wipe their vulva I'd think they were being a bit odd and, uptight, prudish in an inverse kind of way and also an element of performance parenting thrown in there for good measure. BUT I do think it's important to have a name for the area in general and any name is better than none. No name means that you can't talk about it with your child easily, explain privacy, inappropriate touching but and also just talk about it so it doesn't become something unmentionable or embarrassing for your child as they grow up. Own it ladies!

Front bum

With DD it's vagina, penis and front /back bottom.

DS is 12 and is coming home from school knowing all the colloquialisms, including cunt, fanny and twat, but he has orders not to say them in front of DD. Where I'm from fanny is on a par with twat, and I wouldn't use either terms in front of the children.

We have Wilmas MisLou.

Good point raised by someone up thread. Do people who only ever use penis and vulva with their children, only use axilla for their armpits? Or do they say things like... 'Mummy, the scab on my patella has come off!'?

Etc etc

Rollon DD actually does do that but mainly because she's a big fan of Operation Ouch and loves books about the human body!

But fanny is a french girls name so it seems a bit unfair to use. Isn't fanny American for bottom?
We use 'bits', vulva and vagina interchangeably depending on what we are talking about.

Fanny seems a bit crude to me. For my nieces it was always front bottom!!!
I know it's not anatomically correct but it's non offensive and we all know what it means.
They can use more biological or slangy words when they get older

Good point raised by someone up thread. Do people who only ever use penis and vulva with their children, only use axilla for their armpits? Or do they say things like... 'Mummy, the scab on my patella has come off!'?

Actually, it's not the same as that. For a start, patella is the round bone of the knee. It doesn't refer to the whole knee. Secondly, kneecap, tummy, collar bone etc (as all have been mentioned up thread as analogous) are pretty unambiguous. Likewise, if I say I think I've injured my collar bone no one wonders if I'm referring to a bone, a flower, a person I know, some kind of mystical Sprite, a jewel. If I say I've injured my fairy, lily, Minnie, twinkle, Mary, precious jewel, Barry (!), it is ambiguous.... So no, it's not the same.

If I heard someone telling a child in a public lop to wipe their vulva I'd think they were being a bit odd and, uptight, prudish in an inverse kind of way and also an element of performance parenting thrown in there for good measure

I agree. Presumably their children have buttocks too.

Although I find the twee names offensive in their tweeness (far more offensive than fanny) the ambiguous argument is ludicrous.

Do you seriously think any grown up, especially another parent, nurse or teacher won't be able to work out in a few seconds what the child means?

In my mind, "pussy" is the vulgar option and "fanny" is the softer (as it were...)

I agree. Pussy is equivalent to cock. (I'm amazed by all the posters in Scotland having vapours about fanny and I'm temperamentally albeit not geographically a Morningside lady)

Wow, I had no idea "fanny" was considered crude in some regions. I grew up abroad where fanny was the normal term used for a little girl, and is incredibly tame! Meaning nothing more than a little girl's private parts. I've never heard it used as an insult or swear word.
I find a child using the term "peepee" absolutely awful. Hearing anyone say "I need to pee/piss" actually makes me shudder! I find those terms horrendous!

Agreed re being told about what someone is gong to do in the lavatory. Going to the loo is sufficient information

Fanny is a sweary word in Scotland but it's more likely used as an insult than to reference the vagina (I don't know how it's received in the rest of the UK?) but in American it just means bum. Agree with Drama - i'd be taken aback hearding a kid say it.

My mum always used 'botty' or 'front bum' when i was wee and my daughter 6 calls it a 'botty boo' or just a vagina. Agree 2 may be too young for that though.

I'm quite in favour of just destigmatising the word vagina because really, what is wrong with just calling it that - they get taught anatomy young enough and 'penis' and 'vagina' aren't rude words ; it can be rude to talk about them in certain contexts, but they don't have the inherent offence that twat, fanny, pussy (and other much worse!) etc do.

Snatch is quote a popular pseudonym for vagina in this part of the world. But hearing a youngster say it would be very difficult. Fanny is tame by comparison.

I don't even like ball sack. Crude and unpleasant to hear.

Oh and all those who prefer vulva do you say buttocks as well?

It'd be the other way round. Buttocks is over-specific if you're talking about a bum, and vagina is over-specific if you're talking about a vulva.

I use vulva for my 12mo DD. It's only by using these words from a young age that we can strip them of awkwardness!

If there were one word (vulvy, fanny, foof or whatever) that was universally used like willy, it wouldn't actually matter what the word was.

We always just had bits, your boy bits or your girlie bits... Somewhere along the way though my girls started calling their bits their "whinnys" I have no idea where they got this from and find it a bit but they're happy.

Misnomer everyone would know what it was if someone said their Minnie was sore because it's obvious from this thread so many people use those words. If any adult couldn't work out they would be the foolish one.

I've only used min is as an example but I'm sure the other words would be recognised by most adults.

Front bottom here, but I quite like pudendum as a catch-all word for all of the external bits.

Are you aware that 'pudendum' literally translates from Latin as 'thing to be ashamed of'?

I used bits but after the Yr2 session where they label parts both 9 year old and 5 year old thought the words penis, vulva and vagina were brilliant and only use those. Not my doing.