Naked children

[nappyaddict]

Which of these places do you let your children run around naked?

1. Public paddling pool
2. Outdoor swimming pool
3. Whilst using the play equipment at the park
4. Beer garden
5. Your street

pag's and my point was that nude/phtoshopped pictures of you as an adult would be a disturbing invasion of privacy in a way that pictures of you as a nude toddler would not be

plenty of photos of me as toddler in birthday suit in the family album, where they can be viewed by any visiting uncles/aunts/my children's boyfriends/friends/co-workers etc

doesn't trouble me at all and it would be no shock to me to find that such pictures were available elsewhere

but you don't suppose I'd go sticking nude pictures of myself as an adult in there?

I was a baby then=nothing to be embarrassed about

there is a huge difference between child and adult nudity in terms of embarrassment potential

how do we avoid our toddlers being snapped and photoshopped anyway?

keep them permanently indoors?

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You are missing the point I am trying to make, I agree about the invasions of privicy aspect, however, if those photos of you as a toddler were found on a child porn site and you had been photoshopped to look like you were giving an adult man a BJ (for example) and you were told that site had a worldwide customer base would you not be a little upset by it?

Christiana, if she found out about it, yes, this why there are court cases about privacy and so on.

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So would I, but would that be enough to stop you feeling other things about it too?

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your child's doesn't need to be nude to be snapped and then photoshopped.

We are a family of nudies round the house. If we had a more private garden, I'd be naked often too.
My 11 yr old ds has decided for himself that he is too old to even be in swimming trunks outside of a swimming pool () but ds2 who is 8 has to be constantly reminded to put some clothes on.

Fair enough Christiana, we are all different and happy wih different things. A lot of people feel that the risk of someone else finding it is frightening, eg a nasty photo of a young child found by a teen school friend when the child in the photo is also a teen.

The issue seems to be about risk of the child being subjected to pornography and I wonder what the real risk is of this.

If anyone can show a meaningful statistic that suggests there is a significant risk of being subjected to paedophilia due to parents allowing toddlers to be naked - keep children fully clothed.

However, generally I subscribe to the view that being a young child is the only time where a child can roam naked with complete innocence and therefore let them (although I qualify this by saying in places where it would be natural for a young child to be naked, ie, by a pool, beach, on holiday - not a restaurant where people are eating).

I agree with Pag and others - a paedophile is going to get his rocks off on something somehow, whether or not there is a naked toddler in front of him. They're far more devious and less obvious than that. I can't really imagine why someone would take a naked child to a supermarket or beer garden anyway so still wonder why this question has come up.

in garden, house and at other friends with kids same age i have no problem with it (dd1 is 2yrs)
in public no, there are too many wierdos out there.
Pair of knickers or swimming costume at beach.
Beer gardens/street....why??? i can see the point when water is involved.

Ali, I cannot find any actual numbers, TBH they would not be all that relevant anyway as they would only include those found so far and with 100,000 known child porn sites it can be concluded that there are many, many more sites, photos and affected children out there. Also I am not willing to do more than a surface search for information.

As I have said, I do not think the risk is large in terms of numbers, I only think it is large in terms of the effec it has on its victim.

christiana, I'm with you on this. I'd think they were a loon and sad and mentally disturbed but it wouldn't 'upset' me,

Ok scenario, DS (4) is playing in garden and has his willy out. Someone takes a photo or gets hold of one I took and photoshops it to make it look different.

Well at that point I'm not sure its 'natural' or 'by hand' so that rules out that load of weirdos.

They'd have to do a bit of photoshopping to make it 'porn' and I'm guessing that most people would sort of realise that my 4 yr old was probably holding a paintbrush and yelling excitedly about the huge messy mural we were painting not someone else's willy.

By the point it had been photoshoped to that extent it woult be no more real than if someone took a pic of a sheep, and gave it size EE tits.

fast forward 14 yrs, DS is 18 and for some unkown reason this lone photo has managed to survive in the ethernet for 14 yrs. Even more coincidentally someone he knows, finds it and recognises the 4 yr old in the heavily photoshoped picture as the 18 yr old.

They confront him with it

You know I'd sincerly hope DS would respond in the appropriate manner by saying and you find this interesting because................
your brain cells are so minute you honestly think thats a real photo?........ never mind, it must be difficult funcitoning with such a limited mental capacity

you get off on pictures of toddlers in sexual situations yourself?..... ah, I see I think I will go and talk to the authorities now

you don't actually have any brain cells at all and you think that this implies something about me as a real person... oh dear maybe we ought to sit down and have that little talk abotu make believe and real life. Do you struggle with the concept of films and books as well?

Oh and I am sorry if I offended delicate sensibilites but FGS is how I feel about this type of scaremongering.

In public - not really - mainly sun issues, and hygiene. At home my DS (15 months) loves to run around with no clothes and if we had a garden it wouldn't bother me. At friends he also strips! My DD (7) loved the same till about 3 then she prefered clothes on.

I see no harm at home in the garden or with friends in more private settings. But in the open public even at a young age I believe a parent should be encouraging children to follow the social norms of our culture. After all being nude is not to be made a big deal and should be taken along with other rules we teach about behaviour. I would take no offense at a young child naked around me and can understand sometimes last minute a child may be naked if they have gotton clothes wet or in a pool suddenly. Even then they can keep underwear on.

In the end a parent has their own level of being comfortable about their child and the need for clothing.

Halia, thank you for sharing your views. Discussing a real life occurance is not scaremongering but if that is they way you see it fair enough

King

Thank you for answering me earlier.
i have to say in all honesty that i still regard the potential damage from photoshopped snaps of a toddler as too small to affect in any way my behaviour regarding how my children dress. For two reasons ( if you can bear with me)
the first is because the chances of a random picture of a random toddler being seen by someone who recognises that child and then subsequently a) decides to tell that child ( albeit said toddler is now older) and b) chooses to distribute that picture to try and shame said toddler are just too small to be considered seriously

and secondly because the toddler has done nothing that they can ever be ashamed about, in any way, in any circumstances.

It is not thesame as an adult providing pictures and their being manipulated because an adult is almost always naked through their own choice. A woman taking nude photos for her boyfriend and then finding them photoshopped with feel many things andthey may include regret or shame because clearly they exhibited poor judgemnet when choosing who to get naked for.

A toddler is innocent and cannot have anything to be shamed about.

If my pictures appeared, as I have said I would feel no shame. I was doing nothing wrong. If photoshopped images of my child appeared I would not expect her to be catastrophically damaged because she has done nothing wrong.

To suggest that a toddler should be covered up because on day they may find a manipuleted image is a bit like blaming rape victims by tellingthem they should cover up to protect themselves from mens lust. it is crossing a line in my view.

Children should be naked if they wish. And we should be very clear that if an image of a child appears in any form on the internet there should never be an occasion when they should feel shame. Our jobs surely are not to cover them up but to make sure that ALL adult view child porn as child abuse and the children therin as innocent and free from shame or gossip.

I understand what you are saying Pag, the thing is, using the previous rape argument, the victim of rape has done nothing wrong, has nothing to be ashamed of - as you said above. The fact is though that most rape victims do feel shame and do worry about random people finding out about it. I think the same can be said for a lot of victims of hands of abuse, which this would be an example of.

I do undertand and accept that my view will not be shared by all, even people who have been in my position react in different ways to it, there is no right or wrong answer to this IMO. However, I do take exception to being told that I am hysterical or damaging my children because of it! Aas I said before, I do also think it is important to discuss it, mainly because I am not a loon and most other people who feel like me are not either but this whole "hysterical child restricting monster" image is perpetuated because only people who are very hard line about it actually speak out IYSWIM.

I find it very hard to balance my fears with the reality I hope is out there, for instance my 8yo son wanted to walk to the shop the other day, for the first time, every fibre of my being was screaming "No, there will be a monster out there, they will get you and I will never be able to make that better". However, I did let him go because every other box was ticked, no roads, within sight, locals know him/me, shop keeper knows us, he is very sensible etc etc. I had to act on what I knew and suppress what I feared. The ability to weigh up risk is harder for me in some ways because I have been one of those minute statistics but I do, I strive to keep it real and I think it is important that some of the people screaming "you're a loon" understand that!

thanks KingCanute. I understand what you are saying - thanks for explaining.

I know what you mean about rationalising fears too. I left DS2 ( with severe SN) in a coffee shop in a private gym for all of 5 minutes while I took DD down to her swimming lesson. I knew he was safe . I even had a member of staff keeping a distant eye on him.

I still did the stairs in about 0.3 seconds on the way back - for all my awareness that he was perfectly safe.

We have an extra layer of intuition born of a knowledge no one should have. I don't think that is a bad thing and FWIW I don't think you are a loon

Barefootshirl Tried to CAT you but it says you aren't set up to receive them. When you took your DD to the shops in her knickers was she in a pushchair or walking?

I can't remember if you answered this part so apologies if you have but does she just run around the park in her bikini bottoms or go on the equipment aswell?

LilianGish would only a fountain in a park be ok or say a fountain in the middle of a shopping area?

Halia What if it was a family friendly pub with a play area and big grassy field with lots of families and children running around?

For those that think it is odd that your child would be naked in a beer garden it's not that I would strip DS off intentionally so he could run around naked. It's about picking my battles carefully with him being the age he is and choosing which situations I cause a meltdown and insist he puts his clothes back on and which I think oh well so what and let him get on with it.

Thanks for listening and discussing Pag, it is refreshing

KingCanuteIam - I am really sorry for what you have been through I can see how difficult posting on this thread has been for you and I think you have been very brave to do so. I think that a couple of posters have been very dismissive and disrespectful and should be ashamed of themselves.

However, despite your (absolutely awful!) experience and taking into account what some other people have posted, I would still let children run around naked if they wanted to, because otherwise I feel that the paedos/weirdos are winning. There is a small part of your life where running around naked and not even thinking about your body is so natural, that I wouldn't want to curb it.

I have lots of photos of half the street (children only! LOL) naked in my paddling pool and bath... it's a lovely innocent time and I love to see children enjoying that innocence - I wish I could still feel that uninhibited about my body.

I agree with King 100%. Having known victims of this kind of abuse, the thought of these photos still out there is soul destroying for them. It compounds the abuse for them 100 fold. Like being abused over and over again.