Difference between "playing doctor" and "sexual abuse"

Do you consider children use "playing doctor or nurse" as natural or sexual abuse?

What you react if you saw your children playing doctor/nurse with other children?

How you can tell the difference between playing doctor and sexual abuse when you see something with your children's behavior?


Come and share your opinions/discussion.

Here is my answer:

Do you consider children use "playing doctor or nurse" as natural or sexual abuse?

I consider "playing doctor/nurse" as natural because this is a normal way for children to discover/curious differences and learn about their sexuality.

What you react if you saw your children playing doctor/nurse with other children?

I caught my children few times and told them calm to dress and also ask them what's this instead of shout on them.

They also look our bodies and ask us curious question why our bodies (adult) are different as their small bodies. It's cute to see my children's puzzle impression when they look up their daddy's penis and ask their Daddy why his penis is not same size as them.

They also asked me why they don't have my breast and don't have penis.



How you can tell the difference between playing doctor and sexual abuse when you see something with your children's behavior?

I can tell the difference:

Signal of sexual abuse is:

Example about children's aggressive behavior
Don't like to see adult nude bodies
Show other boys how to masterbate
Don't like to know about sex (the parents or adult let the children watch them play nude or sex in the bed).


Signal of playing doctor/nurse:

Children show their bodies to other children.
Ask interesting questions
Didn't pay attention when they saw their nudity parents.

Good post...and very interesting.

Abuse is the indication of something happening more than once, or on a regular basis. I would say that playing doctor is pretty much something every kid does...they're curious. Boys are curious as to why girls don't have the same "equipment," and girls are wondering why they don't have one of THOSE!...

Perfectly natural, IMO, for kids to lock themselves into a room and say, "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours." Pretty much all of us have been curious at one point in our lives, and many of us have "seen" the parts that the opposite gender has.

However, these are kids - so it is innocent. 4-5 year olds do not even hold the word "abuse" in their vocabularies. This is not to say that a child that young is incapable of abuse, because they ARE - but they are unable to define the word. Say Child A loves to punch Child B in the stomach every day...this would classify as physical abuse, bullying, etc...but Child A might interpret it as "I'm only playing with him, I hit him because it's funny."

Back to the original topic...There is a bigger problem at hand when one or both of these kids KNOW that showing off of their private areas is wrong and/or inappropriate.

What I'd like to know if this was going on over more than one or two or three occurances is - where were the parents? How come kids this young are left unsupervised long enough for them to get this far "into" the game of doctor? I believe a good parent will always know what their child is doing - even if there is a friend over and they send the kids "off to go play." In the rare case that a parent will catch the kids in action, then a stop should be put to that kind of play, and an explanation rendered to the children as to why this is wrong.

Hopefully that'll take care of the issue. If not, then there is a problem.

Good thread.

My son was playing dr. We caught him upstairs in our bathroom taking clothes off with a friend's daughter who was only 3 weeks younger than him, they were curious. we just told them to get dressed. we explained that boy is different from girl. They are still little but you can not stop curiosity of their mind.

u know when to interfere if it constantly, like sexual abuse , touching in inapproiate place like masturbating the opposite sex instead of themselves. U will know something is wrong. It is common to see kids playing with themselves by not knowing what purposes of it. I have seen my boys grab, pull and play with their penis in the bathtub or diaper change or whatever.

I do remmy myself doing this with a family friend, we went bathroom and locked ourselves in, saw him going pee pee, and he saw me going pee pee, even we went close up seeing where pee came from. I dont know why I did but anyhow I did! my parents and his parents told us to get dressed and explained why we were diff and all. I was must be umm 6, he was 8 I think.

it is good idea to have a close eye nearby the kids where they are playing, do not leave them unattended. I don't know I thought my hubby was watching our son but he thought the same for me watching him so we learned something from this and from now on, we did keep close eye, still good so far.

Natural curiousity:

both kids are pre-school age

looking, not touching

no force or intimidation involved

one-time occassion, not repeated behavior


What to do?

stay calm and explain physical differences without going into too much detail

keep a closer eye on the kids

teach them about modesty

be careful about who is watching your kids when you are not around; make sure baby sitters, neighbors, etc., have the same rules and beliefs about parenting as your family

When our daughter was a toddler, we bought her an anatomically correct baby boy doll and girl doll so she could see the differences without a big deal, starting young. The dolls also "wetted" so she could see how they functioned differently. (When she was about one year old, I also used the girl doll for potty training. I used the "How to Potty Train in One Day" method with the doll and it worked great.)

p.s.
I don't remember "learning" about boy-girl differences. I was 2 1/2 years older than my brother, so I assume I just learned OJT during his diaper changing time.

When Children's Play Involves Sexuality

http://www.ces.purdue.edu/providerparent/Health-Safety/WhenChildren'sPlay.htm

Sexuality and Your Child
http://muextension.missouri.edu/xplor/hesguide/humanrel/gh6002.htm

wow, impressive this thread excellent!

I wasn't aware expecting about this.. I've seen my children hasn't pretend doctor playing... Nothing happends.. so far..

I am curious why there are so many threads today about sex, nudity, and children. Why so much emphasis on this topic?

Poll: Is it normal.......?

Nudity and Sex: How Kids Handle 'Em? PART ONE

Children's sexual behaviour

Difference between "playing doctor" and "sexual abuse"

Reba said:

I am curious why there are so many threads today about sex, nudity, and children. Why so much emphasis on this topic?

Click to expand...

Here is my answer:

Poll: Is it normal.......?

Click to expand...

It's Freewoman76 & gnarlydorkette who pulled my old thread to post it yesterday. It's my voluntarily to post there. Is it harm?

Nudity and Sex: How Kids Handle 'Em? PART ONE

Click to expand...

I find it's okay for gnarlydorkette to create her new thread to separate from my thread after saw my thread because my thread is only poll to ask people for the opinion/feedback either it's okay for the children to see their naked parents or not.

Children's sexual behaviour

Click to expand...

gnarlydorkette's thread remind me of my old thread because some of people compare sexual with nudity which it's not right, that's why I pulled my old thread back to show them.

Difference between "playing doctor" and "sexual abuse"

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I pulled my old thread to show gnarlydorkette in her thread where the people compare "playing doctor" with "sexual abuse".

The reasons I created some thread separately because I notice that the people mixed nudity with sexual abuse, etc. in my thread which it should not. That's why I split the threads into "playing the doctor and sexual abuse", "children sexual behavior" to save the people to confuse between nudity, sexual behaviour & playing doctor etc.

I firmly believe it depends on the circumstances. Children who themselves have been the victim of sexual abuse, tend to continue the cycle of abuse on others. They have more sexual knowledge than their peers. I think there is a distinct difference between 6-year-olds playing "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours" and a child standing behind another child and grinding their genitals into their victim while nakid. Being curious and examining the physical differences between genders and knowing what to do with those unique differences are quite distinct in nature.