To things isn't really a huge drama

[inmyshoos]

Dd 11 and her friend had a sleepover. It transpires they played a game of show me yours I'll show you mine. Friend goes home and her mum felt she was out of sorts and it all came out. Then I get a phone call saying her dd11 was pushed into it. Felt she couldn't say no. That she feels terrible because she knows it's wrong etc. They like their dc to keep their innocence as long as poss etc
I told her honestly I think it's normal. It's curiosity. It's not sexual at all in my opinion.
Since then she has avoiding me, her dd is no longer allowed to come over and I think my dd feels her friend has distanced herself.
I spoke openly to the mum saying just difference of opinion. They are very religious, we are not and whilst she feels it's 'shameful ' I feel it's completely innocent and no big drama. AIBU here?

OP isn't coming back anyway. So I'm out.

Put aside the question of what's normal - that doesn't matter. Some people will always say it is and some people will say it is not. Their reasoning also does not matter.
OP - you really are trying to minimise and ignore the feelings of others here, and your daughter will be watching you do it. How will she learn to respect other people feelings when you're saying "I think it's fine so it doesn't matter - they are just oversensitive" etc. Your daughter needs a role model to teach her how to respect the boundaries other people have. You need to teach her this.

Also... who started the game? What was the others girls initial reaction? Was she repeatedly asked to join in? Did she say no at any point? Did your daughter insist on it?

The other girl has clearly felt pushed into this - that might not be what happened but you need to ask your daughter these question. If that girl said no at any point, if she tried to not join in and was pestered until she joined in, then that is completely unacceptable behaviour from anyone else involved.

If your daughter pushed her, even a little, then the issues isn't about this game, it's about boundaries in general and needs to be addressed. I'd your daughter didn't encourage her and it's all a misunderstanding, then she can't be blamed but she still needs to learn to pay attention to the feelings of others.

I have 2 dds, one age 13 and one age 10.

At 13 she is very private, has been since secondary I think.
At 10 she is still dancing round in her undies, dropping her towel after her bath etc and we are forever saying DD - PUT CLOTHES ON - THE CURTAINS ARE OPEN

Same in our house! And by 11 the 13 year old had definitely moved into the privacy stage. She would have been mortified if such a game had been suggested. And that is nothing to do with being made to feel guilty at home. We are a very open family. he just naturally had moved away from wanting to show her body to anyone. If the other child in this was upset enough for her mother to notice then, if she is to be believed, she didn't feel comfortable playing this kind of game and I think you need to be having a chat with your DD OP.

Bold fail!

Avasara people can feel pushed into doing things even without actively saying NO. The dynamics of friendships at this age are complex and if there's a slight imbalance, then one child may always feel the need to appease or agree with their friend for fear of losing them.

So it's important to realise that the other child may NOT have said no at all. She may have just done it whilst feeling awful.

I agree with most other posters that at age 11 this is pretty unusual behaviour. Although your DD probably meant no harm and it may have all been in the name of juvenile curiosity, you can't just brush it off when another parent tells you that their DD feels upset and that she feels she was forced into this. Regardless of who is 'to blame' (or if anyone is to blame at all), it is quite insensitive to just tell the other parent that you believe it's normal and therefore there is no issue. I'm sure if you were in a similar position to them you wouldn't want your DD's feelings to be disregarded or just labelled as 'drama'.

People are very different and one child will react differently to another when in the same situation, but it does seem the other girl is upset, which is not a nice thought considering she had gone to enjoy a sleepover with a friend.The best thing, IMO, would be to talk to your DD to get her side of the story, talk to her a little bit about boundaries, and apologise to the parents of the other girl.

Hopefully this gets resolved quickly without more upset or ill will on either side and the girls can remain friends.

The victim blaming from so called feminists is vile, the other girl is constantly being excused because "we don't know what happened" we don't know 100% what happened in most rape cases either but we support the victim and you'd certainly be singing a different tune if it was a boy/girl game.

The girl was uncomfortable, she felt coerced we can't we just believe her instead of setting up what she'll have to face for the rest of her life?

Appropriate has a social framework based on our values and beliefs. As this thread shows its not clear cut.

Oh dear, I take it back about agreeing with Toffee on anything to be honest, I think I wasn't taking their views as a whole. However, if the other parents did ever decide to report it, I suggest that the OP tries out this argument with the authorities. I'm sure it will make things much clearer.

I know MN is known for its hysteria, but I don't think long strings of exclamation marks, red faces and talk of pedophiles is warranted. Get a grip.

I remember doing this when I was about 5 with a friend. The problem here is, when you go to somebody's house on a sleep over, you are on your best behaviour and, to some degree, out of your comfort zone, she 'might' have felt she had to. If this had happened at the girls house, it would be less of a worry.

At 11 you are beginning to explore your sexuality and I think there probably was an element of that here. However, if that was the case, making her out to be comparable to a serial rapist is wrong. She didn't force her to do it.

Recall doing this at about 12/13 with a group of best friends - huddling in Nicola's bathroom on a sleepover and agreeing to all pulling our pyjama bottoms down at the same time to see each other's pubic hair and comparing the discharge in each other's underwear. Our bodies were changing, none of us really knew what was "normal" or how it was all "supposed" to look so we were curious to see, I guess, and probably after a bit of reassurance. Can't remember it being especially sexual, and none of us had been sexually abused.

The coercion aspect is the issue here and that's what OP you need to address with your DD. That she must always accept that no means no and if somebody seems reluctant to do something then it's never okay to try to convince them otherwise or ask a second or third time. It's irrelevant whether the friend's religious background or sex-negative household has led her to perceive what she did as something shameful - the only bit your DD needs to know is that it was wrong if her, if she did, to try to convince her friend that doing something she was uncomfortable with was fine.

@AjasLipstick

That's why you have to ask more than just "did she say no" - you need to find out if she was pestered into saying yes. She may have said nothing and just tried not to join in, she may have tried to suggest a different game.
That's why I said find out what her reaction was - she could have gone quiet, been shocked, tried to change the topic - all of those would be an indicator that this was not ok.
That's why I said find out if she was asked repeatedly and pestered to do it. If this was pressured then that's not ok.

That's why I said the OP needs to talk to her daughter about paying attention to people's feelings.

If the other girls simply went "yeah! Let's do it" then an 11 year old would struggle to tell if she was uncomfortable but all those other things, she should recognise.

I'd feel uncomfortable about it too. Since I was 8 only medical professionals or sexual partners have seen me naked. I have never seen my parents or my brother naked. I do realise that other families are more open but to people like me it is a big deal. I think the minimising makes it worse. It's not bad that the girls stripped, but just shrugging your shoulders at upset parents is. You should take their feelings seriously even if you don't agree. Keep going into a discussion about right or wrong (neither is) is not helping.

I keep thinking OP will come back after her first response.
I don't see why their values are the only reason why their daughter might have felt uncomfortable. In any event if the daughter is uncomfortable the reasons why don't matter it isn't OK to just barge on and play the game.

The other mother knows this game made her daughter uncomfortable, she tried to do something about that, perhaps with the intention of preserving future play dates but realised that if the situation arose again, her daughter's wishes might well not be respected because OP thinks it's fine and her daughter is fine to do as she did despite the discomfort caused, so the other mum has tried to protect her daughter.
I don't see what is unreasonable about a mum doing all she can to protect her daughter from something that is uncomfortable.

FWIW Neither of mine are at the body shy stage yet, but I always emphasize no means no-stop means stop-and if you don't like it move away and or speak up to them to me to DH tell. Always tell.
This isn't because I am religious it's because I am trying to protect them.

This happened all the time at sleepovers I went to at that age!
I think they both just need to forget about it and move on!

I would have said initially that up to the age of 7 it would be normal but I'm not a child expert so I don't know. My feeling is it isn't normal at 11 but perhaps it comes within the bounds of normal.

I wouldn't automatically believe the other girl that she was pushed into it - she might have been but might have been a willing participant. It could be deflecting because of guilt (with the mother possibly reinforcing that and given her a "get-out" with "did XX suggest this to you, did she egg you on, did she?" It might have been easier for the girl to say it was your DD's idea. You just don't know.

Unless you hear your DD's side of the conversation of what led them to that point of doing that I don't think the DD should be blamed automatically for instigating this and upsetting the other girl. It's possible the other girl has upset herself - she wanted to participate, she had second thoughts after going home, she felt guilt, she blamed her friend. Those automatically blaming the DD should be ashamed of themselves.

Recall doing this at about 12/13 with a group of best friends - huddling in Nicola's bathroom on a sleepover and agreeing to all pulling our pyjama bottoms down at the same time to see each other's pubic hair and comparing the discharge in each other's underwear. Our bodies were changing, none of us really knew what was "normal" or how it was all "supposed" to look so we were curious to see

This ^

Following on from my previous post here I’d urge every mother of prepubescent girls to have a conversation at some point with their daughters about what’s normal - if you don’t know what’s normal do a bit of research.
See many older women, even in this day and age who think they have some weird shape or offensive discharge when they really don’t. I’d be more worried about your dc friend long term.
Having said that the coercion thing ( if it did happen) needs tackling.

People going on about coercion - we don't know if there was any or if it was made up by this other girl to deflect. We don't know the DD's side of it yet!

Can you not see the difference with being comfortable with nudity and a “show me yours” type game that apparently involved coercion?

Apparently being a HUGE part of the issue here. Everyone is piling in on the OP’s DD.

The only information we have is that the girl says she was pushed into it. No alternative scenario has been offered from the other side. all we can do is to take the mother’s complaint as it has been presented to us. No “defence” has been offered by the OP to contradict this.

Very wrong. Not innocent at all. It sounds as if the OP is encouraging this sort of nonsense. She needs to tell her daughter how to behave and keep her knickers on around her friends.

I don't think this kind of thing happening at 11 is abnormal at all. I think people conflating it with either pre-school age curiosity or sexual interest are on the wrong track - at 11 they were almost definitely comparing signs of puberty. At this age my best friend and I - voracious consumers of Judy Blume and dying to be 'grown up' - would frequently compare our non-existent breast buds and few strands of pubic hair. It was sexual in the sense that it was about sexual development, but completely innocent of any other motivation.

But that's not really the point - the other child was upset enough that her mother noticed there was a problem, so obviously she wasn't completely comfortable with what happened. I'd be having a non-blame-allocating conversation with my daughter about the inadvisability of this sort of thing. And I would definitely have apologised to the other mother that her daughter had been upset.

dont remember doing this age 11 maybe 7 or 8 but i had pubic hair at 10 and was uncomfrtable showing even my parents

Funnily enough, I don't think there is nearly as much disagreement on this thread as it first appears.

1. we all have different levels of normal/comfort. Some would/were happy to do this at 11, others weren't. Some are more relaxed about nudity, others aren't and some girls become more private at an earlier age than others. That's fine.
2. If a child is upset we should take it seriously. I like the post that says if they got upset over a game of snap, then the child was upset and it needs dealing with. The fact that it involves bodies is slightly clouding the issue
3. We don't have a full picture of what went on, we have no idea if the girl was coerced. We have no idea if OPs dd talked her into it, if she said no, or actually anything at all apart from that the other mum said she was upset. No need to jump to any conclusions about EITHER child
4. It is a massive jump from this to sexual activity in any direction. Curiosity about changing bodies is the most likely explanation. But that doesn't make it right for any child to be upset.
5. As the other girl's mother, of course you take it seriously and help her to understand what went on, and make choices about whether she continues her friendship. We should believe our children when they tell us things like this.
6. As the OP, you need to have a chat with your daughter about this game, as it is not one for everyone, and about listening to friends

I actually think most people on here agree with most of that.

I've been busy with work so only just getting a chance to respond

I did apologise to the other girls mother. I said I was sorry this had happened and that her dd was upset. I also said we obviously had different views on it. Agreed to disagree. Said I would speak to dd11 and offered that we get them together to talk openly about what is appropriate etc but decided that with such opposing views it might not be helpful.
I wasn't prepared to accept without further discussion that my child was the leader in thus and that she had been pushy. Personality wise my dd is the less pushy and far more likely to be blamed in other situations by this girl (previous incidents at school, teachers opinion too so not just me thinking my child is innocent at all)
My dd was embarrassed felt her friend had been just as involved and that she was in no way pushy. We discussed consent. Have looked at and talked about this previously anyway and is familiar with the tea video.

Fwiw I appreciate all the different views. From my own experience this type of thing is common at that age as girls develop and feel insecure about their changing bodies. I too had sleep overs where we showed pubic hair, compared discharge, period stuff etc. It didn't make me feel abused and I wasn't ever the leader or a victim. It just happened. We were all just young kids and I don't think it was remotely sexual.

I am in no way trying to minimise the other girls feelings or her families feelings but just recognise they are different to mine. I just think it's a pity that it is now seemingly affecting their friendship when I think it could have been actually a good life lesson in boundaries, privacy, consent, changing bodies, ways to say no.

I too had sleep overs where we showed pubic hair, compared discharge, period stuff etc.

What the absolute fuck? That is not normal in the slightest. Discussing getting your first period maybe, but the rest of that is just disturbing

I don't think even if I had shared my family's experience OP would have taken it on board - nothing would make her think she was BU.