"It's my body!"

[Pleanut]

I'm just interested in views on this - I accept that how these parents parent is up to them.
So we had some people from France to stay with us for a couple of weeks. This was the first time I'd met their daughter, who is 4 and is basically a very bright and sweet little girl. She started saying "It's my body!", which at first confused me. The parents explained that her nursery teaches children the concept that everything is up to them. The phrase isn't to do with no-one touching you if you don't want them to, or anything like that. It's a much wider concept. So if someone said something like - "Shall we go for a walk this afternoon?", the child might say, very assertively, "No! It's my body!". Then nobody would be able to go for a walk. At first I assumed this was an issue with the nursery, and said that I would have been unhappy if my children's nursery had taught them that, but it became clear that the parents were all for this approach. The end result was that I'd expected to do lots of fun and interesting things with the whole family (we live in a nice part of the country and there's lots to see and do) but the holiday quickly descended into the mum taking the child swimming every day, because that's what the child wanted to do.
On one occasion, when the child said she wanted my teenage child to do something for her, I responded "No, she doesn't want to, it's her body", which the little girl found very upsetting because she obviously sees the concept as applying only to her.
Is this a new thing? Have you come across it?

How irritating. I would have gone out and down what I wanted. After all, it's your body.

That's nuts! When it comes to activities everybody needs to learn to compromise and share. It's absolutely not the same concept as touching etc.

I mean, yes, it's her body. There are some things she has rights over, fair enough. But she sounds like she's heading towards being spoilt if she doesn't have to consider the rights/preferences of others at all!! At 4, she really should be starting to get that concept....

The parents need to sit her down and explain that 'it's my body' is applicable if someone tries to touch you in a way you don't like, or whatever euphemism you want to use for sexual abuse. Not in family situations where there's an activity going on or a task to complete. They need to do this ASAP.

I would have said "well, there are 3 body's that want to go for a walk and only one that doesn't so we go for a walk". Make her learn to compromise, that we don't always get to do what we want to do.

That’s crazy. What if she wants a shot of tequila and a line of coke for dinner, it’s her body?

I got the strong impression that this was not about protecting children from sexual abuse. That it was maybe some brand of child-centred child-rearing. The parents are very intelligent and ambitious and I suspect that they chose the nursery for this approach, rather than the nursery messing things up. I didn't interrogate them on the subject though. And I didn't join in with the swimming trips, so it's not as if it inconvenienced me. Just seemed a bit of a shame.