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Question:
I dont know if you can help me or not. I am the father of 2 beautiful sons, age 6 and 3. My oldest son had been acting a little different. I asked him what was wrong. He told me that last summer we allowed a friend of ours son to stay the night. They are the same age. He said that they pulled eachother's pants off and touched eachother. I have told him over and over that it is ok and a normal thing. I expressed to him that he will have thoughts along these lines and that it is ok. I also told him that he should not touch anyones private parts or allow anyone to touch his. He seems to understand this. Yet he is extremely upset. He tells me about it everyday. He says he is so emberrassed and that the " bad thoughts wont go away." I guess i wonder if all of this is normal. Not only the contact with his friend, but the way he feels. He is literally driving himself crazy thinking and feeling guilty about this. I really dont know what to do....please help me...or let me know of someone who can...
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Answer:
by Konstance McCaffree: (05/27/2004)
I answered this the day you sent it to me, and my original answer went somewhere in cyberspace (some type of computer glitch!)I wanted to get right back to you and reassure you that talking openly as you have with your son is exactly what he needs. I want to congratulate you on being open and explaining that what happened with his little friend is or can be normal child's play. Also, helping him know that touching each other's bodies may not be right, but needs to have permission is a message that you may want to reinforce.
Remembering that he is six and trying to make sense of all this in his eyes means that we may have to sort through several messages that he may have gotten from other places as well. You may want to help him reconstruct if he can what he remembers about the play with the other little boy. He may have not felt on equal ground with him even though they are the same age. One or the other may have pressured, and if it was your son, his guilt may be related to learning that touching another person's genitals is wrong. He may interpret what that means as he was wrong even if it was mutual play. You will have to help him understand what it means to give permission (as when he gets older and people touch they give permission to do so, as then it feels good and they want to be doing that).
He also may have heard other things about what it means to touch each other like that. Not only may he still be interpreting what they did as wrong, he may also be considering why it is wrong. Did he just feel pressured? Was it just because you have said that the touching was wrong? Did they do something else that he didn't risk to tell you about that he interprets as wrong? Is he aware that male male touching is sometimes made fun of (young males often learn very early that something like "gay" is bad and not manly)?
My suggestion is for you to continue talking to him and try to get him to articulate what makes him feel badly. Just your reassurance at this point may not be enough until you hit on what is underlying his concerns/worries. Maybe he is concerned that he liked it and wants to do it more, and that was bad!
There are some books for children his age like "It's So Amazing " by Robie Harris that you could read with him and though it is about birth and babies, maybe learning more about all these things from you would ease his fears.
Please feel free to write back and let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.Reviewed by Sexual Health Editorial Team
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