There are widely commented instincts and reflexes in the baby, although this is not given too much importance or is a somewhat relegated temal. Babies are born with a sex drive, an impulse not as developed as feeding, sleeping or receiving affection, but an observable impulse after all.
For example, boys can have erections at birth or shortly thereafter, and also children sometimes before three years of age play self-pleasing games that child health experts do not hesitate to qualify as masturbation. They are already showing us that they feel pleasure with their body.
Even before, approximately one year old is when boys and girls instinctively realize the pleasant feeling that touch produces, unlike what they can feel when touching other parts of the body.
Touching the genitals is a natural attitude, and our reaction to this fact will provide valuable information to the child. Some more information that we add to the information about sex that we are giving children as parents, often without realizing it.
All parents can be surprised to see our children rubbing their genitals, especially if they do so in public. It can be disconcerting at times, and perhaps some situations are embarrassing.
What can be done in these cases is to distract them by talking about anything else that captures their interest, giving them a toy, or talking about the subject but always naturally, without anger and without abruptness.
If it is at home where he performs frequently, we must look at if you do it out of boredomWell, probably if we propose a game or do any activity with them that entertains them and keeps them active and fun, they will stop touching each other so much.
Our relaxed attitude towards the subject will be fundamental so that no taboos or false ideas are established. If they are punished or pressured to stop doing so, we will probably get the opposite effect. Talking about the matter is the best long-term resource.
How to talk to young children about their sexual impulses
But, What to tell our young children about masturbation? We can tell you that touching your body is not bad, that parents do it with their own bodies, but that it is better to do it in private. Intimacy is the way to explore the body.
What we should avoid is to tell lies about how harmful it could be for your health, as it has been done in certain times, and of course not to scare them with any kind of myth, story or threats about what might happen to you. Masturbating, seeking self-pleasure, is a natural attitude that takes place in intimacy as part of people's development.
Recall that in this matter the "problem" we have adults, for children there is no impediment to touch where they like, in the same way they choose the food or cartoons that they like, regardless of whether they are in presence of other people or not.
Of course, now addressing a very sensitive issue, that of prevention of sexual abuse, we must explain that it is something that they can do with their own bodies but no one else, and that in the event that someone would like to touch them they must tell them immediately and without any fear of father or mother.
By five or six years it is very likely that the frequency of touching decreases or, at least, that they do so more quietly. Later, in adolescence, masturbation is almost universal, in relation to hormonal changes and the onset of sexual desire, although that is another story.
As we have indicated, understanding that it is a normal process and talking with young children about what they do, We accept the sexual impulse in children as something natural, without drama, helping them to understand and accept it as part of their sexuality just as it was ours.
