To think if a young child asks about periods you should just give them the facts?

[RedStripeIassie]

My dd (just 4) is a superglue child and still comes with me to the toilet 9/10 times. She notices each month I 'have blood wee wee' which is what she calls them and she's just started asking more. I've explained that women and older girls have blood in a part of their tummy that comes out and we use types of bandages to catch it. She's asking lots of questions and saying randomly 'boys don't have the blood in their tummies' etc. She wanted to know where it comes out so I told her out of my fanny and so she did the whole 'girls have fannys, boys have willys' thing on repeat.

To me that all seems ok but I'm doubting myself now as she'll be talking about it at pre school and I wonder if teachers etc will be at what I've said or the fact she's on with me whilst I'm changing tampons etc. It's ok isn't it?

Oh ffs. As long as kids call a body part something generally recognisable I can't see an issue. What police officer, teacher or child protection officer isn't going to understand fanny??? Doctors and healthcare professionals generally these days use the standard colloquial terms for things rather than the medical term to be better understood (poo sample, rather than stool sample, for example).

Agreed @Bouncy.

I've never met a doctor or gynaecologist yet who has used the correct terms.

The issue is more around the secrecy and lack of consistency Hedgehog. If a healthcare provider suspects a child has been abused, how is she going to ask the child about it if the child doesn't have the words to talk about it? What if the HCP says 'Did he touch your vagina'? and the child says no because she doesn't understand what a vagina is?

I think there are some really unhealthy attitudes around the naming of women's genitals in particular, tied to 'innocence' as though knowing about your own body makes a girl 'guilty.'

Absolutely right in my opinion to answer DCs questions as they pop up, at whatever age.

Admittedly it was many years ago but I had a friend in my class at school, 12 years old and the first one to start her period as far as I know, who had no idea that she would bleed each month. Poor kid was terrified and told us that she thought she was dying and for the first day or so was too frightened to tell her mother.

One of my DDs had a friend who used to ask me questions because she was too embarrassed to talk to her own mother about such intimate things as periods and sex, they were about 14 at the time. Awful.

The very fact that this discussion exists at all shows what I mean. How could it ever be wrong to tell a child about a normal bodily function?? But there is such secrecy and shame around women's bodies that we are still, in 2017, talking about whether to give perfectly ordinary information to children about something entirely normal.

A HCP could say "private area" if they thought abuse was taking place. They could and do use dolls or pictures.

@pigsDOfly was I your friend??

I didn't get told anything about periods other than they start when you're older.... in my head I thought when you're in you're twenties or something. My mum is a MASSIVE prude and I was off school sick when we had sex ed. It was fucking terrifying when I started my period at 12 and didn't know why blood was coming out of me!! I thought I was seriously unwell!! Haha!

But the HCP shouldn't be saying "did he touch your vagina", they should be saying "where did he touch you" - and if fanny is the term in use, there's not going to be any confusion. I agree terms like "tuppence" "mini" and "flower" should be avoided.

I told DS that my mooncup was for collecting my period and he misheard me and thought that I had pyramids up my fanjo

We got it straightened out in the end!

Why not use the correct word Batty - that's my point really. Fair enough use euphemisms most of the time but when you're explaining things use the real words and explain things properly - there's nothing to be gained from confusing children and giving them half the story with inconsistent terms.

@Sparrowhawk, the HCP won't say 'Did he touch your vagina?' because it's a leading question. They will ask the child to describe what happened in their own words, and ask questions to clarify which body part is being talked about if the child's vocabulary is unclear. They often also get the child to draw pictures, point to a bit on a diagram, use a doll etc. What they definitely won't do is ask such a closed question.

I, personally, don't like cutesy terms for genitals and have taught my dd to say vulva and vagina for the appropriate bits, but that doesn't impact on how professionals are trained to handle abuse investigations.

The question to ask is - in a world where we really want our girls to be independent and educated, why are we denying them knowledge? Why is this something to be talked about with silly words and half explanations when we would be proud of our girls knowing the full details of anything else?

sparrowhawk I agree strongly that there is still loads of shame attached to women and normal things women's bodies do. It makes me so angry and I'd love to be able to eliminate it on a one to one level.

Fair enough Fink - but if a girl doesn't even know she has a vagina then how does she say that that was where she was touched? Without going in to too much detail - this made a huge difference in my abuse. I could have said vaguely what my abuser did but because I didn't have the words to explain what he actually did it would have come across as him just doing something normal.

bertie I do call it my pyramid sometimes. Must stop!!

Also must stop dh calling sanitary towels jam rags

My then 3-yr-old ds was curious about tampons, as he is about absolutely everything he sees. So I told him in an age-appropriate way. No need to give him the full details, but no need to make up something that will only confuse him later on either.
He uses the words 'willy' and 'vagina'
I consider 'fanny' vulgar and disrespectful (but understand that to others it's completely normal)

We use cute names for all sorts -willy, tummy,belly,bum,poo.

tummy/stomach or abdomen is as clear as fanny/vagina or vulva. In some cases it could cause confusion but not in the case of sexual abuse. That some people on here are saying they think fanny is a very rude word for it means everyone knows what it is, whether they think it's slang or swearing. If a boy said someone touched his cock or willy, everyone would understand him, he wouldn't need to say penis, and fanny has been compared to both words on this thread. I totally agree about euphemisms but I don't think fanny is a euphemism. If anything vagina is the euphemism, for cunt. And it's better to have a word like fanny than to be taught your vulva is your vagina, I think.

Think you did the right thing. Always best to honest with your children about their bodies, regardless of age. My DS (2) is taught 'penis' and 'vagina' (I know it's more vulva - but I can't stand that word). I was taught 'willy' and 'minnie' as a child, but I think it's just personal preference.

King .. I think that would annoy the hell out of me. I'd have to say something personally, as they are your children and you have that right to make the decision.
Red .. jam rags

Yes Dame but those words are well known, children can see that they're there and point to them and they're not shrouded in secrecy. I'd wager that a lot of 4 year old girls don't even know they have a vagina at all.

I have nothing against age-appropriate explanations as long as they're fundamentally correct. For example if a child asked about a volcano and what it does, we'd say that's a volcano, lava comes out of it when it's active. We wouldn't go in to detail about tectonic plates etc but we'd be clear on the basics.

Saying there's a pillow in a woman's tummy is just plain wrong. It's not age appropriate, it's just silly and confusing.

Better hide those old Enid Blyton books then. Fanny was a popular name

Both DS and DD followed me around so, they knew about periods from an early age. It's only a big deal if you make it one. I'm very happy mine know the facts around periods, and not leave it until the last minute like my parents did. Normal bodily function.

When my DC were about that age and noticing more, I told them that my body made a lining for my uterus for a baby to grow on each month. If I wasn't going to have a baby, the lining had to shed off each month so a new lining could grow. I made sure they understood that the blood was extra blood that needed to be got rid of.

I don't understand why people tell their children babies grow in 'tummies'. Your tummy is your stomach and that's going to lead to a lot of confusion later on if children think babies grow in stomachs.

'In some cases it could cause confusion but not in the case of sexual abuse.'

So are you saying I'm wrong about my case rina?