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Dear Dr. Heather,

Mel

Hi Mel,

At 3 years of age, your son now has an awareness of his body. He also is sensitive to any changes in it, and worries whether the changes mean something is wrong. Children crave consistency, and when things are different — they can get upset and worried.

Your son is not alone. Most toddlers and preschool-aged boys show an interest in the sensations and changes happening in their penis. (I guess it’s an interest that starts in early childhood — and never goes away!) It’s a perfect opportunity to convey the overall message that:

Your body is a good thing;
The sensations your body produces are healthy and normal; and
It’s OK to touch and explore your body — in private, by yourself.

Talk to your son about his private parts. Use short, simple sentences, and don’t try to convey too much at once. “Yes, sometimes your penis gets big like that. Sometimes it is small. But we don’t take off our clothes in the living room. You can go look at it in your room, if you want.”

Make sure nobody is giving him a negative message about his body; check with sitters, grandparents and others to see if this has “come up” with them, and how they’ve handled it. You want to make sure he’s getting a consistent, positive message.

Of course girls show the same interest in their bodies; check out this post. It also describes the limits of “normal”, and when to worry.

It’s not too early to begin to send a healthy message to young children about their bodies. Aim for striking a balance; you don’t want to instill a sense of shame or negativity about the body. Yet you want them to internalize the sense that their bodies are private and should be respected. It will help them to eventually feel a sense of physical integrity and safety, and to set appropriate boundaries later on.

Aloha,

Dr. Heather
The BabyShrink

Mr. Dr. BabyShrink, introduced here, is the playground expert. So I’m letting him handle the following question, sent in by reader Ben:

Dear BabyShrink,
I have a 3-year-old son who gets pushed around on the playground. He is active but friendly. At the playground, my wife gets involved and tries to work out the disagreements that occur between our son and other children. She becomes too protective, and I think I can be the same way. When do we let our son take care of his own battles, and when do we step in?

Ben in LA

Dear Ben,

Here’s What Not To Do
When our daughter was about the same age, she was pushed flat on the ground by a little girl on the playground. I immediately went into “kick ass mode”, and yelled “Hey you, little girl” at the top of my lungs. I immediately saw that I had scared both girls. I tried to collect myself as the other parents gawked, and I realized I was over-reacting. I walked up to the girl who did the pushing and said, “Honey, we do not push at the playground. We wait our turn. When she’s done, it will be your turn”. I could see that both girls didn’t hear one word I said. My daughter was still startled and frightened by my tone, and the other little girl was just staring at this big man who had yelled at her.

After talking with our daughter later, she was able to say that she was most upset about me, and not the altercation with the other girl. I had to apologize for my over-the-top reaction, instead of helping her figure out how to handle other kids’ pushing on the playground.

Here’s What I Should Have Done
In the future I will let my BabyShrink wife handle playground skirmishes. But in all seriousness, it would have been better to have stayed quiet, and allowed my daughter to handle it herself first. She was not in any real danger, and I was right there if she needed help. I think it’s natural for parents to over-protect and over-react in these kinds of situations. However, reacting this way, we are conveying the message that the little one cannot handle their own affairs. Parents get in the way and become the focus of the problem, instead of allowing the child to learn to resolve the situation on their own. Children develop incredible social skills by handling difficult situations on their own, as long as safety is not an issue.

Help Them Think It Through, For The Next Time
After a parent witnesses “a situation”, it is helpful to talk to your child about the way she handled it, and help to brainstorm other ways of dealing with it in the future. We need to put our Neanderthal instincts in check as much as possible. Our kids will stop bringing these situations to us if they know we will over-react. Children will lie to please their parents, instead of discussing the difficult situation.

When parents become too emotionally charged, it usually does not lead to a good outcome. This is one of the most difficult aspects of being a parent: keeping your emotions in check. How do you do that? Take a deep breath and think about how your response will be heard by your child. “Good enough parenting” takes thought and sensitivity. Show understanding, and confirm the facts. Don’t make a scene. Children do get bruises on the playground - don’t have a coniption about it. Calmly teach your child how to verbally defend herself. And if that doesn’t work, have her ask a parent or teacher for help.

I want to thank my friend Jeff for helping me edit this post. Jeff is the stay-at-home Dad to four kids, ages six and under!

Dear Dr. Heather,

My daughter is five-and-a-half and starts kindergarten in the fall. Though she’s not developmentally delayed, she is a bit emotionally immature. The thing is — she’s a finger sucker (the 3 middle fingers on her right hand). It doesn’t interfere with her play, but if her hands are not busy, her fingers are in her mouth. Even when she talks, I constantly have to say, “I can’t understand you if your fingers are in your mouth.” Her 3-year-old brother is a thumb-sucker himself, so that could complicate any attempt to get her to quit.

Quite frankly, this drives me BANANAS. But I don’t want to make her quit just to soothe my own self-consciousness or aggravation. If I do try to help her quit, how? Help me, BabyShrink!

Ellen D.

Dear Ellen,

While finger and thumb-sucking tends to subside naturally by age 4 or 5, it’s not uncommon for it to linger awhile longer. We expect a kindergartener to behave like other elementary-aged kids. But ask a teacher. Kindergarteners and first graders are really closer, developmentally, to preschoolers. At this age, kids still don’t care how they appear to others. Social pressure to fit in doesn’t start until closer to age 6 or 7. That’s what will probably be more important to her over time; what her friends say about the finger sucking. Until then, there’s not much you can do to stop it, and you’ll have to Find A Way To Ignore It. Look away, take a deep breath, and do something else.

Isn’t it amazing how well our very young children have the ability to find the exact habit that makes us nuts? My current struggle is with our 2-year-old. He doesn’t suck his fingers, (which probably wouldn’t bother me much), but he very deliberately throws food from his highchair. (And he has good aim now, too.) That’s what drives ME bananas. And the more I try to make him stop, the worse it gets. I’m not saying your daughter does it on purpose to annoy you. But I am amazed at how often our kids’ behaviors push exactly the wrong button with us.

Young children have such little control in their worlds. They’re physically small. They aren’t very coordinated. They’re not allowed to do a ton of cool-looking stuff. Their bodies and minds develop so quickly from day to day, they have no idea what they can (or can’t) accomplish at any particular time. And at any moment, they’re liable to get picked up without warning and taken somewhere they don’t wanna go. Their independence is developing, and yet it’s often thwarted. You can’t blame them for trying to establish some sense of power and control in their life.

That’s why they need self-soothing strategies; funky little habits that help them feel better about the lack of control and chaos they experience in daily life. These self-soothing strategies are also selected partly to aggravate us, as parents.
It’s your kid’s way of saying, You may be able to have 90% control of me, but this 10% is all about me. The fact that it annoys you may be what makes it so powerful to your daughter. It’s her way of saying, I finally have some control here! I can get Mommy really bananas about this finger sucking thing!

As a child psychologist, I’m not usually worried about the young kids who have developed weird, annoying
self-soothing strategies. I do worry about the kids who are too compliant and too easy, at this age. Their budding
sense of independence needs to be appreciated and given room to grow. So my advice is this – Pick Your Battles. And only pick the ones you can WIN. This one, you won’t win. I mean, is there any strategy or technique that actually
works to make a kid stop sucking their thumb or fingers? And more importantly, is that technique worth the price you will pay, psychologically?

If you look up solutions to finger and thumb sucking on the internet, you will come across sites that suggest aversive techniques such as using nasty-tasting things, or even installing dental appliances. YIKES! While these techniques may physically stop the offending behavior, I’m really alarmed at the kind of emotional and psychological damage they could inflict. What kind of message does that send to your child? Your self-soothing strategies are so offensive to me that I will pull out the big guns to make you stop. Your efforts at learning to be independent are going to be crushed. This could set the stage for a complete withdrawal of the drive for independence, resulting in a regressed, passive child. It also could simply press the “pause” button on asserting independence, and then you’ll have major power struggles later, when you can’t simply pick them up like a football anymore. I’ve seen too many difficult
therapy cases of 10 and 12-year-olds who are only starting to rebel after having their spirits crushed as toddlers. And then, the rebellion is far worse.

So hang in there, with understanding for the struggles your daughter is experiencing. You should always check with your pediatrician if you have any concerns, but by and large, weird and annoying toddler/preschooler behavior is almost always transitory, and almost always normal. And enjoy this last summer before her first “real” year of school! They grow so fast! (sniff!)

For more on Preschoolers, here’s a list of posts you might enjoy.

Aloha,

Dr. Heather
The BabyShrink