Sensitive - what do you call your ds' girlie bits?

[beegee]

This is a tough one - I've a 3 yo ds and i've confidently called his private 'bits' his willie..he's happy with this and always uses the name when needed. No probs there. With girls its harder...i've got a 6 mo ds and, although it's early days, i feel i'm already searching for an equivalent for my daughters girlie 'bits' but struggling i'm afraid!

I'm not a prude. I don't find it difficult to talk about these issues. I just want to avoid the name my mum called mine - wee wee - eeeck! Now I call mine 'my vagina' but this doesn't seem right for a little girl and it always makes me feel a bit...errr...cringey IYKWIM.

When my ds and dd share a bath or when i'm changing my dss nappy, my ds is satisfied that she just 'hasn't got a willie'. But it's started to make me think - what does one name it?!!

I apologise if this offends anyone...not intended. I would love others opinions/experiences.

I disagree F&Z. When I was growing up, my admirable mother, who had absolutely no hang ups about discussing anything, referred to our "bottom", and the three holes therein as hole for weeing, hole for babies, hole for pooing. I was I remember slightly concerned for a while that a baby may come shooting out at any time, but she explained that too.

I think bottom is in common parlance as a term for vulva. "have you wiped your bottom?" Nothing wrong with that. Somehow I didn't grow up confused, or inhibited, or with a less than positive self-image. I LOATHE pet names, but bottom isn't a pet name. It's like "tummy". (although I do ask dcs to specify stomach or intestines if they complain of tummy ache). I have no problems with calling a vulva a vulve, but I also think bottom (with recognition that there are different parts of the same) is also acceptable.

We only have a girl so hers was always called tuppence until she got older, she's now eleven and she simply refers to them as her "bits" which I think is simple enough. If we had a boy I think "bits" would also suffice. Its simple and unisex!!

I am coming to the conclusion that te word we have fallen into using - bottom - is the best of a bad lot. I am uncomfortable with the very anatomical words - just as I am uncomfortable with children using exagerratedly grown up language about anything (something my very old fashioned father used to refer to as "don's disease" - don as in academic, not as in Mclean). The euphemisms seem to be sending the message that it is an area that you shouldn't talk about and perhaps should be slightly ashamed of. And if every family has a different one the possibility of confusion is huge. Bottom at least has the virtue of simplicity and is universally understandable.

yep bottom better than "tuppence"

fgs

Can anyone find Franny's fanny?

you see I so agree with F&Z on this - and I am trying really hard with 'vulva' (although sounds sooo like 'volvo') - but I am being horribly seduced by 'fanjo' which is just such an excellent word, and have started using it with abandon (the word that is).

The thread that is, I've tried but can't see it anywhere, it was hillarious!

I have a particularly appalling SIL who, much to my confusion, used the word tuppence when we were swapping birth stories. I genuinely had no idea what she was talking about until eventually the penny dropped. Or do I mean the tuppence......
Anyway, any word that she uses is a complete no-no for me. Frankly I would rather use a different language..

Not just me that's horrified by grown women using daft names to describe their genitalia. Surely, if you can give birth and discuss giving birth you can have the courage to use the word vagina .

Forgot to say - I have a friend who is pregnant with her second baby and upset because she has been told she needs to have a c-section (fair enough - lots of empathy for that), apparently she'd rather it was delivered via her TWINKLE!!!!

"Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are....."

I remember the first time I heard the term 'front bottom', as a child, feeling utterly outraged. And thinking 'thats NOT a bottom, MY bottom is at the back, thats where POO comes out of!'.
But then, I didn't grow up with that expression -still hate it now, though.

What expression did you grow up with?

"I think bottom is in common parlance as a term for vulva"

I can't say how strongly I disagree with this - in that I think it is untrue - and I am appalled that people might think it is true or want it to be true. Would you call your son's penis his bottom? Why on earth would you call your daughter's vulva the same name as her buttocks - as Elibean has said - the place where poo comes out from?

I grew up with a French mother, so bottoms didn't come into it...or derrieres, for that matter. And my British father, silly man, wouldn't have mentioned genitals for the world - though if he had he probably would have said (looking away) 'genitals'. Or possibly 'behind' as its nice and vague.

The usual French words for kids to use are zizi for penis, and zezette for vulva/vagina - but my mother didn't use those either. I didn't like the word she did use 'lune' meaning 'moon' as a child, and was stuck with no comfortable word at all.

Which is why I need the MN-vulva-therapy-group now, of course...

Give over Franny. It IS. And it is a world away from the minnies and tuppences and God knows what else that have been suggested here.

As a matter of fact, I tend towards the correct terms myself.

My daughter has no concept of genitalia. For her, bottoms are about wee and poo. Just as my son is as yet unaware that his penis is multifunctional. When the time comes, I shall, as my mother did, explain the principles of reproduction, and the role that their sex organs will play in that (hopefully in a less pompous way than I have just expressed that!). Why should it be so terrible that the place where my daughter's wee comes out should be called her bottom for now?

In our family it has always been lulu for the girls and tiddle for the boys. I made sure my son knew the real names before he went to school. For some reason we also call sanitary towels wim-wams.

Becky, we did have the three holes discussion with my mother though, same as you - and no hang ups about that. My sister and I used to chant a made-up song in the bath about the big hole at the back, the tiny hole at the front, and the sweeeeeet little baby hold in the middle - then shriek with laughter

Girls, eh.

Um, hole.

bottom isn't an anatomically correct term either, is it? Buttocks are the bit we sit on and anus is the part the poo comes out of.

Thank God you knew about the three holes. I teach so many children who, at 11, don't know that. Some with more "progressive" parents think they wee out of their vaginas, and the rest have the very vaguest notion about "down there" as I suspect their parents put it!

I didn't say it was. I compared it to "tummy" - not correct, but not coy either.

It was mentioned on Woman's Hour this morning that the first time the word vagina was used, not very long ago, grown men fainted all over the country.

becky, sorry, I was addressing the bottom remark to franny's 6.09 post (didn't see yours at the time).

Ah!

I mentioned this topic to dh, who said HE felt a bit faint at the thought of our children using the "correct" terms in front of his parents.

Here it is - breaking taboos - very interesting piece (I was only half-listening though, I should listen again myself. Not sure if it had any helpful hints about what to call our tuppences )