Looks like you're in the UK. Did you know The Strategist is too? Stepping into the garden this past spring, I saw my first-grader holding an odd, almost motionless position on the gymnastics bar by the garage. It was something like a half-pull-up. With her eyes squeezed shut in concentration, she gripped the bar overhead, abs tight, legs wound together, her feet suspended a few feet from the grass. She swayed ever so slightly, like a peapod on the vine. The bar was too low β my knees would drag on the ground, I replied, sounding weirdly legalistic, and wondering whether there was more I could β or should β say.
No doubt at this very moment, children are straddling hot-tub jets and squatting over sprinklers, scooting down tree branches and riding fence rails.
One glitter-dusts her crotch. Another inserts a marble. Barbies grind. A pair on a playdate drop trou. Curious about incipient twinges of physical arousal, little kids stumble into funny ways of triggering them β and most fool around with their genitals now and then. Up to 85 percent of adults say they remember playing sexual games with other children before hitting puberty.
Experts tell shuddering parents and teachers that such behaviors are all normal, healthy, and developmentally expected. And then they prescribe ways to eliminate them. You might have heard of the famously open approach to sex ed in the Netherlands, with parents teaching babies accurate terminology for body parts, school sex ed starting in kindergarten, and even, for many teenagers, romantic sleepovers being allowed at home.
Having lived in Amsterdam when my children were younger, I can tell you the Dutch approach is even more different from ours than you may have imagined β and far more brilliantly practical. Twelve-year-olds whacking off in the living room?
