What word do your children use for female genitals?

[frannyf]

Apologies if this has been asked before, but this is becoming an urgent issue in our household. Ds is 2.5 and has just started asking "Where is your willy, Mummy?" I told him women and girls don't have willies...and then froze.

I don't want him to think that girls just have an empty area where a willy should be, I want him to realise we have our own special bits, but I cannot settle on a word I feel comfortable with.

"Vagina" is so medical. "Flower" and all those sort of words seem too cutesie. I feel "fanny" is the right equivalent to "willy", and did try it, but I just cringed saying it to ds and felt even worse when he repeated it. I obviously did not sound convincing anyway as he has reverted to calling it a bottom. Help! Sorry if I have rejected your family's choice of name by the way, I don't think any of them are wrong or anything, just don't feel right saying them myself. Am I hopelessly uptight?

Dp is right though, our little angel is - ahem -nocturnally challenged, and I need more sleep than I am going to get, what with in-laws coming tomorrow. Night all.

But LM- surely it depends on the age. I mean I'm not going to get out my pop up book for a 3 year old- any cague term is OK at that age....

Is it? So you would call your ankle your shin because to a 3 year old, it all just a leg?

Frannyf - yeah let's do that, and then we can all eat our placentas and knit some uteruses...
I have prob said this before but dd likes to look at her twinkle and say, look mummy my lovely vulva... maybe you could practice doing that in the mirror??

Well I'll accept either tbh. But I don;t have to get out a pop up book to demonstrate my shin. Just like skull and head are used interchangeably, and I certainly wouldn't start going on about a femur unless we were having a very spevific bones of the body type conversation.

LM - serious question - if you are so keen on getting the correct medical term then why have you never told your children them?

OK don't use the medicla terms but you can't use the word vagina to mean somethng else! Sophable implies she calls her pubic region (for want of a better term) her vagina. Well, she is incorrect to do so. She may call it anything she likes, but it seems a bit self defeating to call it by the name of another part of her body.

Oddly enough my ds is very interested in the proper names for bones! However, despite wanting to buy poor mummy a willy at Ikea, he hasn't wanted to know what I do have.

hARPSICHORDCARRIER - (Whoops getting carried away) I have answered that several times now: because they have never asked me what their names are.

sorry LM you are being pedantic. Looking at a skeleton earlier today I called the jaw the mouth. It doesn't matter- it's using language in terms a young child will understand. I mean a 3 year isn;t going to start groping around to find out the difference between a vagina and a vulva- in if they went into nursery saying vulva I'm sure a few people would choke.

She is not incorrect!!! Why on earth do we need to make it more confusing for our children??

Willy and Fanny and Thats Final!!!

yes but if they don't hear it from you then how can you be sure that they are getting accurate information? you can't surely believe that they have never considered what they are called? or that they don;t have their own words for them? and surely you don't only tell them anything unless they ask?

Thread far too long to read all the way through, but aren't small children only really concerned with the weeing functions, and not sexual? I can't really see that I would need to explain to dd about a vagina until I was explaining reproduction. I wouldn't have thought they would find it by themselves. Am I wrong? (dd is 18 months old and not there yet). ds calls his penis a penis, much to the discomfort of most other adults I know.

aloha- I used to be like that- and I;m sure ds2 will be quite soon (he's into proper names for dinosaurs at the moment). I just meant in passing I wouldn't say femur unless is was a specific conversation about bones.

Sorry that was aimed at lonelymum calling sophable incorrect

Hate cross posts

OK call it what you like. All I can say is, thank godness my children don't ask me what female genitalia are called as I would be quite as embarrassed as everyone else.

Oh and BTW, please don't think that I am repressing my children or uncomfortable about my private parts simply because the need to tell my children their names has not yet arisen.

I'm not embarrassed in the slightest lonelymum

No, me neither Jimjams, but I just thought is was funny that he was interested in bones, but not in my boring physiology.
Keep meaning to CAT you!

FANNY FANNY FANNY FANNY

WILLY WILLY WILLY WILLY

Sorry had a few beers

Magnolia, I wil be forever accused of being pedantic, but let me inform you she is incorrect.

From the dictionary:

VAGINA: a female genital passage

Vulva: the external organ of generation of the female mammal of the orifice of it. (My emphasis)

LOL magnolia...
not embarrassed either.

Oh Blimey Lonelymum,

I don't actually care a bit whether we use exact correct terms quoted from a dictionary!! We use Willy and Fanny which suit US as a family and my girls just fine

Can't believe the length of this thread!

My boys (8 and 3) haven't asked either - though they have expressed concern about my lack of a willy.

So we are decided that vagina is the correct term for the insidey bit and vulva for the outsidey bit?

But all those who object to silly names (minnie, nonnie, etc) for womens' apparatus...men get a pet, acceptable name in "willy" - why isn't there a mainstream female equivalent?