Child masturbation is a completely normal habit. Let’s not forbid it to children, or we risk developing a conflicting relationship with autoeroticism
My 4 -year -old son discovered the pleasure of rubbing the pea. Can we talk about pediatric onanism? At the beginning I took it as a normal phase of growth in the knowledge of one’s body, but then it became an obsession: it rubs for a long time, especially at night and in the morning it does not want to get up. Scolding it is not needed; I told him that even if he likes, he must devote himself with measure and not in the presence of others. I distracted it with pampering and attention: yes calm, but then she wants to go back to bed to do it again. Perhaps he needs to find ways to vent energy and creativity: he is restless and bored, but he is still small to play sports continuously. I involve him in home activities (doughs, pierced …) and I let him run for the courtyard.
“Pediatric onanism”? What a bad expression! Recalls ancient obsessions that have raged on the generations of over two centuries, starting from the nefarious book of 1759 Onanism. Dissertation on diseases produced by masturbationby the Swiss Samuel Tissot. Sperm believed a “vital fluid” produced by the spinal cord (!) Whose dispersion had to be harmful, who knows why, if obtained with the masturbationbut not with sexual intercourse. Pseudoscientific prejudices that arise from the evident need to control and repress the pleasure and the realization of the subjectivity of others. Better to talk about masturbation or autoeroticism.
Origins of prejudice
The name “Onanism” derives from the Biblical Onan, who, in order not to have children, used the interrupted coitus, “spreading the seed on the ground”, which is not appreciated by the God of the Bible, which condemned the dispersion of the fertilizing potential, not the practice of masturbation itself. Non -health or psychological reasonsbut linked to that religion and the moral one. St. Thomas even recommended masturbation to the woman who had not had orgasm in marital sexual intercourse, to make them produce the “female seed”, he believed he believed necessary for conception.
The idea that the masturbation hurts It was born as an ideological attempt to scientifically found moral prohibition, but is completely invented, without a scientific basis, nor for physical health, nor for the psychic one. Tissot “saw” that people affected by the most disparate diseases had had masturbatory habits: he deduced that masturbation was the cause of those illnesseswithout considering the normal high frequency of masturbation. It would be like saying that the activity of running and walking is the cause of diseases only because it is found in the history of many sick people!
Genital organs: designed to give pleasure
We come to his child. The genital organs are made in order to make pleasure. It is obvious that a child, in the normal exploration of himself and the world, also runs into that pleasure and tends to repeat it. It is normal and healthy that a child and a little girl start to masturbateand it is normal and healthy that, during their lives of children, young people, adults, mature people and then of elderly, they also resort to masturbation. Parents know how strong sexual pleasure is. For this reason they often fear that children are fixed on that only pleasure, avoiding others, perhaps more articulated and enriching.
Indeed, it is a intense pleasurebut quite limited, closed in itself, which can be obtained without great commitment and which, by its nature, is realized in a substantially present perspective of time. It would be a shame if in life we limited ourselves only to that. It is useful, precisely for a full fulfillment of themselves, that since children are known and trains to search and also create pleasures that require design, commitment, expectation.
The goal is the balance
Scold, impedeurged to moderation and distracting are maneuvers that conversely convey a Message of disapproval and disqualification. This, yes, can produce a “fixation”: not to masturbation, but to the anguished conflict masturbation. To damage, then, will be the sense of guilt, conflict, anguish, not masturbation. Let his son masturbate in peace.
Always respecting his privacy, it offers him many interesting activities and situations, so that he can expand his horizons and acquire numerous, different ways of obtaining pleasure. Without, however, to inhibit that completely healthy, who found himself alone. Also explain to him, perhaps with the help of a book suitable for age, as they are made, What are the genitals work and how they work. And love, sexuality, the exchange of pleasure, the procreation: prospects it will make when it grows up.
The balance between the various pleasures of life is conquered with theexperienceprogressively. He will see that his child will also find, in his ways and times of his balance. It gives him time. And the occasions.
That his son is restless and bored It is very important. Maybe the problem is this, not that masturbates. If he could do things that interested him and make him feel alive and happy, he would perhaps have less needed to masturbate. But the aim is to be more alive and happy, not that of masturbating less. That the masturbation is the antidepressant most at hand is (almost) only a joke of spirit. Often, in fact, it does not have that effect because, even if it gives pleasure, it does not give much on the level of self -realization, resulting satisfactory in some ways (gives a real pleasure), but disappointing for others (it does not lead to self -realizations, if not minimal). If the prevailing prevails disappointment And if you do not have other ways of getting pleasure and making yourself, it is possible that it is resorted to it in repetitive and compulsive ways, which in the long run can lead not to be great that they are happy, not because you masturbate too much, but because you realize too little. The recommendation, then, is not to repress masturbationbut to extend self -realizations.
At four, his son is ready to open up to many things, such as aquaticity, social games, musical games, body expression, the use of colors … just think of all those wonderful things that the teachers of kindergarten know how to propose and facilitate. It is nice that she participates in domestic activities, but from how it talks to me it seems like a child rather alone, compared to other children. The be with other children It helps a lot to live your child.
