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Home › Articles › Toddlers › Early Explorers:When Toddlers Discover Their Sexual Selves

Early Explorers:When Toddlers Discover Their Sexual Selves

By Phyllis Ring

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Among the world's most active explorers, toddlers are bound to be curious when they discover their genitals and notice sex differences in others.

Experts claim that a parent's response to this curiosity lays a foundation for healthy sexual attitudes later on. As with everything else, how you interact with your child on this issue has influence for years to come.

"There's so much you find yourself dealing with as it happens," says elementary teacher LaRae Johnson Davis of Gloucester, Mass., mother of sons ages 7, 5 and 20 months. "For us, it's important to be relaxed, honest, use correct terms and respond in as natural a way as possible. Whether answering questions or intercepting the baby who's about to tug on his brother in the bathtub."

Getting to Know Me
Toddlers touch their genitals because it feels good, and because they're discovering what's there and how it works, explains counselor Joan Haskell, LCSW of Merrimack, NH. "It's normal, part of how they begin to differentiate and notice things about themselves and others."

Children are sexual beings from birth. They learn about relating and pleasurable experience as they are cuddled and cared for, Haskell says. Toddlerhood is when basic attitudes about sexuality are formed as children notice how their bodies feel, how others touch them, how family members relate to each other and refer to body parts, and what behavior seems acceptable.

This is also when they become aware of themselves as girls or boys, and are likely to point out sex differences and copy adult behavior associated with gender. "To be just like Mommy or Daddy," Haskell says.

A Parent's Response
Parents can respond to a toddler's genital play in a variety of ways. Some ignore or minimize it, recognizing that a child will understand more about modesty later on. Others may acknowledge that this feels good and point out that it's also something to be done in private. Still others might choose to redirect a toddler's attention to another activity.

Parents need to respond in a way that's comfortable for them and age-appropriate for the child, says Haskell, while bearing in mind that a message that such exploration is "bad" can create confused feelings about genital pleasure in the future. Parents who feel uncertain about how to respond can also talk with a pediatrician or other informed source. "I found the group of nursing mothers I met with very helpful for discussing these kinds of things," Haskell says.

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