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Turn off Animations. Turn on Animations. Our Sponsors Log in Register. Log in Register. Ages and Stages. Healthy Living. Safety and Prevention. Family Life. Health Issues. Tips and Tools. Our Mission. Find a Pediatrician. Text Size. Advice from parenting expert and clinical psychologist David Coleman on how best to deal with a five-year-old daughter's masturbation.
David Coleman Twitter Email. My five-year-old daughter was constantly "grinding" on her chair in school last year and I had numerous meetings with her teacher. She has done this grinding since she was a baby. I can remember her doing it in her high chair and she also does it in her car seat. She can't seem to stop herself and I can only assume she enjoys the feeling it's giving her.
I don't want the other kids to start noticing her doing it and start picking on her. Can I, and should I, try to stop her doing it or is it something she will grow out of? David replies: For your daughter, as with any child, the sensory experience of touching her genitals against different surfaces or for other children with their own hands is pleasurable. Occasional masturbation, like this, is also completely normal.
What might make it problematic is the frequency, intensity or public nature of her "grinding". For most children, engaging in such self-gratification is an occasional tension release, a response to boredom or a need for some comfort. Some young children will be entirely unselfconscious, like your daughter, and some will be more discreet. By age five, most typically, children will have learned to keep any masturbation private. This is due to their own growing self-consciousness and because their parents have probably been reminding them of the need for privacy for some time.
Some religions teach that masturbation is wrong. We do not intend to question this belief or value system. Simply stated, adults who themselves choose not to practice masturbation for moral reasons will have to be wise in how they approach this matter with their babies or young children. There will be ample opportunity for the child as he grows older to be taught how to respect his genitals in a religious sense.
While genital stimulation is normal behavior for a child, it bothers parents and, if excessive, can bother the child. Here are some ways to keep a common practice from becoming a harmful habit. So occasional genital massage is not dirty, harmful, or a signal of an underlying emotional disturbance or of problem parenting.
Genital play can become more than just a passing curiosity when it becomes frequent and intense and the child becomes so preoccupied with self-pleasure that he or she withdraws from interacting with others. Medical complications from genital stimulation are rare, though in girls excessive and intense friction rubbing their genitals against something hard like the saddle of a toy horse can traumatize the urinary opening, resulting in urinary tract infections.
This is less likely to be a problem for boys since their urethras are longer. Manual stimulation will not damage tissues as long as little hands are clean unless the child willfully inflicts pain on himself or herself due to the obsessive intensity generated.
This is a signal to parents that some intervention is needed. Dear old Aunt Mary is sitting in your living room. In full view is four-year-old Susie climbing on the arm of the couch.
She wiggles around and soon has that happy look on her face.
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